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A word about the composition of this volume: Part I, “Four Faces of Hospitality: Linguistic, Narrative, Confessional, Carnal,” written by Richard Kearney, discusses recent research on the philosophy of hospitality, which informs the international Guestbook Project he directs (www.guestbookproject.org). This first part articulates an ethics of hosting the stranger in four short chapters. Opening with an account of linguistic hospitality, advanced by Paul Ricoeur and Jacques Derrida, it goes on to illustrate how this model of hospitality as translation and narrative exchange applies to three recent pedagogical experiments: the Guestbook Project of exchanging stories, the Twinsome Minds project of “Double Remembrance,” and the “Exchanging Memories” project of the Irish Famine Memorial in New York. The discussion then reviews debates on religious hospitality as translation in contemporary political philosophy—notably in critical theory and Jürgen Habermas—before concluding with a plea for a “double hospitality” involving both word and touch. The ultimate aim here is to explore bridges between “linguistic” and “carnal” ways of hosting the stranger, an exploration that culminates with a promissory note on political hospitality, serving as prelude to Part II.

Part II, “Hospitality and Moral Psychology: Exploring the Border between Theory and Practice,” written by Melissa Fitzpatrick, builds on the insights gleaned in Part I. It analyzes the relationship between hospitality and moral psychology (namely, how we understand ourselves and our moral motivations) in four further chapters. This second part begins with a careful hermeneutic of Kant’s classic notion of international hospitality in relation to the experience of respect/obeying the moral law (Chapter 5). From there, it provides discussion of the post-Kantian shift to philosophies of hospitality—in particular that of Emmanuel Levinas—elucidating the Derrida/Ricoeur/Kearney debate on impossible and possible hospitality discussed in Part I. It concludes with a consideration of Arendt’s more political/practical position, offering a middle way between Kant and Levinas (Chapter 6).

Chapter 7 offers an analysis of the practical reclamation of Aristotelian virtue ethics in contemporary Anglo-American debates, arguing for a reading of phronesis that involves hospitality to the unknown and to others, engaging Talbot Brewer’s recent reimagining of virtue ethics. In light of the account in Part I of narrative hospitality’s experiments in contemporary culture, Chapter 8 explores some pedagogical applications that follow from the preceding chapters, briefly abstracting what a pedagogy of hospitality might entail, drawing on the author’s own work in precollege philosophy in the Mississippi Delta and on the border of the United States and Mexico.

This volume ultimately suggests that an ethics of radical hospitality—which takes the route of embracing complexity, diversity, and ambiguity—happens, first and foremost, by opening oneself in narrative exchange to someone or something other than oneself. That is, something new that we have not seen, encountered, or experienced before. This invariably involves crossing borders, both literally and figuratively. That is, national and domestic borders, as well as the borders of what we know and hold with certainty. We understand this to be what sits at the heart of a narrative peace pedagogy without borders, which informs all of Guestbook Project’s endeavors.

What we hope to suggest is that despite our propensity to cling in fear to certain and familiar dogmas there is another way: namely, to follow the intrinsic human desire to wager with the unknown, leap into the unanticipated and venture the strange. In so doing, we not only learn to understand ourselves as hosts—exposed, vulnerable, daring to share a world with others—but also that fostering a disposition of hospitality toward what is other than ourselves is part of a full and flourishing life.

Beyond this, we contend that an essential condition for the possibility of overcoming war and the xenophobia that often fuels it, is to engage in the often uncomfortable activity of narrative exchange that embraces difference and distinction, takes the risk of not knowing what is true with a capital T, and has the courage to trade one’s cherished gods with the gods of others. It signals an audacity to embrace the new by “chancing one’s arm,” opening a vital space for unheard voices and welcoming strangers to our home.

We would like to think of this book not only as a philosophical companion piece to our practical work in Guestbook and the classroom, but also as a companion volume to two previous publications on the topic: Hosting the Stranger: Between Religions (2011), edited by Richard Kearney and James Taylor, which explores the cardinal role of hospitality in five major wisdom traditions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism); and Phenomenology of the Stranger: Between Hostility and Hospitality (2011), edited by Richard Kearney and Kascha Semonovitch, which investigates the relationship between hostility and hospitality from a variety of hermeneutic perspectives. While these two books laid the platforms of interreligious and phenomenological dialogue for a new understanding of hospitality, the present volume attempts to apply this understanding to concrete living examples of pedagogy, art, and commemoration in the contemporary moral world. It aims to show that the ultimate end of hospitality is the practice of peace.