09/21/2022 – Ricoeur and Suspicion: Hermeneutics Part 4

Why is Ricoeur’s view called the hermeneutics of suspicion? He tried to bridge the divide between Habermas and Gadamer, but was he successful? Come join the party to find out. I don’t get invited to parties very often. Hey, don’t look so surprised. Well, this actually isn’t a party. This is TenOnReligion.

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This is the fourth part of our five-part series on hermeneutics, the art of interpretation and understanding. The first part was on the death of the biblical author, the second on Gadamer and dialogue, and the third on Habermas and critique. Later we’re going to get into Levinas, but today…Ricoeur and suspicion. Are you ready? Let’s rock!

Similar to Gadamer, who we’ve already talked about a few episodes ago, and Levinas who is the subject of our next episode, Paul Ricoeur follows in the footsteps of Husserl and Heidegger, two very important philosophers in the early 20th century. He is a French philosopher who wrote many essays and books, not only about hermeneutics, but other subjects as well such as structuralism and narrative theory. Many of his early works written at the Sorbonne in Paris became very popular such as Fallible Man, The Symbolism of Evil, and Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation. He is best known for articulating a hermeneutics of suspicion whereby the restoration of meaning is then counterbalanced by a suspicion of meaning. We’re going to see how he sort of mediated between Gadamer and Habermas, or rather sort of combined them.

One of the central issues in Ricoeur’s early hermeneutical thought was the symbolic function of language. Symbols have a double-intention with both a literal meaning with reference to the world and a second intention, or a deeper meaning. This can be seen in many religious symbols, for example, those which reenact the religious consciousness of human fault, guilt, and other similar boundary situations which had huge implications for the construction of whole societies all over the globe. So, where does the suspicion part come in? Ricoeur looked at the writings of Nietzsche, Freud, and Marx and their respective impact upon philosophy and subsequent development of postmodern culture. Nietzsche was will-to-power, Freud was ego and desire, and Marx was the effect of class struggle upon the economy. In their own way, all three showed why and how one should be suspicious about received traditions and thus look beyond, or in some cases see through, literal meanings. This became a core feature of critical theory which we mentioned last time when talking about Habermas. Ricoeur referred to these three figures as the masters of suspicion.

Ricoeur then focused his hermeneutics of suspicion on two things: the interpreter and the text. He looked at the contrasting approaches of Habermas and Gadamer and tried to make sense of what they were saying. He described Habermas as explanation in the form of a descending pathway. How people find themselves in various traditions can be historically traced through the method of critical theory by identifying ideologies. He then described Gadamer as understanding in the form of an ascending pathway. One must recreate the meaning for the present while still being aware of, and trying to avoid passing on, negative ideologies. Before continuing on to the explanation of Ricoeur’s mediation between Habermas and Gadamer, we need to side step for a minute and go back to the first episode in this hermeneutics series on the death of the author and revisit a few ideas there.You see, Ricoeur, like Gadamer, was an anti-author-intentionalist, especially when it came to religious texts. For Ricoeur, it didn’t matter what the intentions of the authors of religious texts were, the authority of such religious texts was still important. In fact, that’s the very reason why religious texts in many traditions are elevated to another level and labeled “scripture” in the first place. The overall messages of the sacred narratives, poetry, prose, or chants are for anyone who can read or hear them. They are universal messages that go far beyond the original authors. If this wasn’t the case, then why would they still be read and heard today? The importance of the message takes precedence over the historical intentions of the original authors. The reader interpreting the message as a present-sense event always goes beyond the finite context of the author. Ricoeur and Gadamer basically agreed on this issue.

So back to Habermas and Gadamer. Ricoeur’s view is that they are in a dialectical relationship with each other. Sort of like Romanticism and the Enlightenment, for those of you who know what those two eras in European history are. Hermeneutical understanding today requires that religious texts be decontextualized, that is, detached and abstracted from their original contexts, and then recontextualized so that their messages remain alive. This relates to Gadamer’s question and answer format. Every new generation must discern and find answers within religious texts to the questions they are asking within the contexts and challenges of their own era. How is this done exactly? I’m glad you asked that question. (I always hated when my teacher said that.)

Ricoeur said one must first experience distanciation from the text. When one experiences any ancient text, be it religious or not, one comes to the realization that they cannot relate to that world of meaning. They don’t live within the context of that time and era. For instance, we don’t live in a three-fold non-heliocentric understanding of the universe as many people in ancient times did. Second, one must try to figure out the underlying structural analysis. It’s not just looking at a specific instance of a game of chess, but looking at the very rules of the game of chess. Structural analysis means looking at how words were used. How were ancient binaries such as man/woman, or yin/yang to use an Asian example, used structurally to communicate physical or metaphysical realities in ancient cultures? Looking at the underlying structure of language is important. Third, critique of ideology. All interpretations should not lose sight of how historical data is connected to ideologies. Pretty much all texts, even if they seem to be merely informational on the surface, are written in such a way as to bring particular effects on their intended audience. Authors are persuading readers to believe, think, or act in a specific way and one needs to be aware of that fact and discern appropriately. Fourth, self-understanding. Once the previous three steps have occurred, the dialogue, such as Gadamer suggests, then occurs. One asks, who am I and who are you (as in, the text)? Or better yet, who am I in light of this text? In this stage, one must be willing to have one’s own understanding and consciousness critiqued because it may be the result of an unidentified ideology of which one is not aware. One’s self-understanding must be willing to change through the process.

These four steps kind of create a fusion of horizons, to use Gadamer’s terminology, between Habermas and Gadamer. One explains the text and its resulting ideologies developed throughout a tradition, but one doesn’t necessarily simply accept it and continue within it. One uses the creative tension between the past and the present to give birth to a new understanding related to the questions the reader is asking today.

So, what do you think about Ricoeur’s hermeneutics of suspicion? Leave a comment below and let me know if you feel like he successfully mediated between Habermas and Gadamer. Coming up is the final part, part five in our hermeneutics series: Levinas and the Other. It’s gonna be a good one. Until next time, stay curious. If you enjoyed this, support the channel in the link below, please like and share this video and subscribe to this channel. This is TenOnReligion.