Ricœur’s Hermeneutics of Suspicion: Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud

Paul Ricœur highlights the hermeneutics of suspicion of three influential intellectuals from the twentieth century. He argues that they aim to uncover hidden realities, as his 1970 work, *Freud and Philosophy*, explains. Ricœur identifies Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud as leading this school of thought. He also emphasizes that labeling them as mere skeptics would be a mistake. 

While they are known for challenging established ideas, their work goes beyond that. They also expand horizons and explore the art of interpretation. In short, each thinker systematically reveals false consciousness, making connecting expressions to actual situations easier. For Ricœur, these three figures represent overlapping approaches to demystification. 

In *Truth and Method*, Gadamer systematically surveys hermeneutics, framing it as a dialogue between a claim and a process. In this context, the hermeneutics of suspicion operates by navigating between these elements. Ricœur introduces the concept of the hermeneutic arc, aiming to reconcile suspicion and understanding without disregarding the scientific method. 

This approach applies not just to linguistic expressions but also to historical actions in general. Similarly, understanding a text requires considering the author’s intent within its context. 

When the three masters of suspicion inspired Ricœur’s hermeneutics, David Stewart showed how each thinker sought the true meaning hidden behind false meanings. 

  • First, Marx’s research links the false definition to the concept of excellence, which acts as an out from the brutal facts of brutal working needs, naming it the opium of the people. 
  • Second, Nietzsche’s analysis of the false definition concentrates on telling it to save the helpless. 
  • Third, Freud’s approach separates real meaning from surface appearances, seeing the latter as illusions driven by human will. 

Ricœur acknowledges the importance of uncovering false meaning and applies this principle to communication within the hermeneutic framework. 

While the natural sciences focus on causal explanations, the cultural sciences aim to understand meaning. For instance, Dilthey stresses comparison’s role in achieving broader truths. He aspired to elevate the human sciences to the same level as the natural sciences. Through hermeneutic theory, he demonstrated that while hermeneutics values subjectivity, the insights it provides also possess objectivity. 

In this way, objectivist hermeneutics balances the relationship between subject and object. 

Since objectivist hermeneutics is based on the polarity between subject and object, it treats hermeneutics as an epistemological problem that seeks to uncover truth in an ontological context. Alethic hermeneutics tries to merge the contradiction between subject and object into a more fundamental understanding of the situation. There are at least three schools of alethic hermeneutics, each with a different focus:

  • Heidegger’s existential hermeneutics suggests that the original structure, with its hidden dimensions, is forgotten at the roots of existence. 
  • Heidegger’s poetic hermeneutics argues that metaphorical patterns reveal what is hidden. 

The hermeneutics of suspicion, developed by Marx, Freud, and Nietzsche, explains that suspicion arises when people do not easily trust what is revealed behind an expression. 

Ricœur disagrees with Dilthey’s separation of understanding (as a key concept in the human sciences) from explanation (as a key concept in the natural sciences). He believes both are necessary steps in interpreting activities and are dialectically related. This new perspective on their relationship allows Ricœur to see the true linguistic nature of interpretation as a linguistic event. 

Ricœur uses various methodologies in his hermeneutics, starting with structuralist theories from the three masters of suspicion. 

In evaluating how the hermeneutics of suspicion reveals the limits of understanding, Ricœur agrees with Habermas’s critique. For Habermas, depth-hermeneutics and communicative competence should diagnose systematically distorted communication to analyze conditions where communicative activities are not repressed. Ricœur shares Habermas’s concern, believing it should be integrated into the interpretation model. 

Therefore, Ricœur’s explanatory phase is not limited to structuralist or linguistic analysis; it also includes the method of suspicion proposed by the three masters of suspicion. 

The main issue with the hermeneutics of suspicion is that there is no single theory or method of interpretation. There is a conflict between different interpretations of existence as seen in cultural texts, arts, beliefs, symbols, rituals, and more. Paul Ricœur argues that each hermeneutics of suspicion uncovers certain aspects of the same truth. Humans can better understand the object discussed through the dialectical relationship between various interpretations. 

Regardless of how truth is expressed, Ricœur believes that truth is a future that must be traveled toward. At the starting point of interpretation, Ricœur argues that all meanings have a hermeneutic aspect. He says that knowledge is always mediated through interpretation. Philosophical reflection must begin with the most basic language of life: narrative, metaphor, and symbol. 

These are what feed into the review. Ricœur also believes that classical texts engage humans first before humans interpret them. However, do humans interpret the text because it has already spoken to them? The initial moment of understanding is just as important as all the subsequent moments about the meaning of a text.

In the end, interpretation has no clear endpoint. However, is it the other way around? Ricœur responds that interpretation is always open-ended. If humans think they have reached the endpoint of understanding, that is a “violation” of interpretation. Also, hermeneutics must place situational events and their horizons in the proper context. It is about separating what should be included in the understanding process from what should be removed, like popular concepts or things that are just imaginary. 

In other words, the interpreter must be aware of different biases against reason and the mind.

References

  • Dilthey, W. (2002). The Formation of the Historical World in the Human Sciences (R. A. Makkreel & F. Rodi, Trans.). Princeton University Press.
  • Gadamer, H.-G. (2004). Truth and Method (2nd ed.) (J. Weinsheimer & D. G. Marshall, Trans.). Continuum.
  • Habermas, J. (1984). The Theory of Communicative Action: Reason and the Rationalization of Society (T. McCarthy, Trans.). Beacon Press.
  • Heidegger, M. (1962). Being and Time (J. Macquarrie & E. Robinson, Trans.). Harper & Row.
  • Ricœur, P. (1970). Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation (D. Savage, Trans.). Yale University Press.
  • Stewart, D. (2006). The Hermeneutics of Suspicion: Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud. Cambridge University Press.

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