Hermeneutics of suspicion


"School of suspicion" is a phrase coined by Paul Ricœur in Freud and Philosophy to capture a common spirit that pervades the writings of Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, and Friedrich Nietzsche, the three "masters of suspicion". This school is defined as a balanced recognition and perception between "explanation" and "understanding" that validates expressions of a representation.

Overview

According to literary theorist Rita Felski, it is "a distinctively modern style of interpretation that circumvents obvious or self-evident meanings in order to draw out less visible and less flattering truths."
" share a commitment to unmasking 'the lies and illusions of consciousness'; they are the architects of a distinctively modern style of interpretation that circumvents obvious or self-evident meanings in order to draw out less visible and less flattering truths... Ricoeur's term has sustained an energetic after-life within religious studies, as well as in philosophy, intellectual history, and related fields."

Felski also notes that "The 'hermeneutics of suspicion' is the name usually bestowed on technique of reading texts against the grain and between the lines, of cataloging their omissions and laying bare their contradictions, of rubbing in what they fail to know and cannot represent." In that sense, it can be seen as being related to ideology critique. Felski has built on Ricœur's theory in outlining her influential theory of postcritique.

Types

explains that "Ricoeur distinguishes between two forms of hermeneutics: a hermeneutics of faith which aims to restore meaning to a text and a hermeneutics of suspicion which attempts to decode meanings that are disguised."