Hermeneutic of Suspicion

In reviewing this definition, I realized I needed to express it in terms that postmodern people could understand. So, here goes...

The hermeneutics of suspicion is the perspective that today's woke people have toward the scriptures and towards other foundational elements of pre-postmodern society.

Okay, now that I've said that, I can perhaps explain what it is to people who are not yet woke.

The expression hermeneutics of suspicion can be traced to Paul Ricoeur's critic of Marx, Nietzsche and Freud. The technique evolved from the increasingly systematic turn to the role of the subjective as essential in the interpretation of phenomena as found in the Phenomenology school attributed to Edmund Husserl and his followers. (See the somewhat influential paper by legal scholar Brian Leiter, The Hermeneutics of Suspicion: Recovering Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud.) Fundamentally, a Hermeneutic of suspicion is a radical reevaluation of the claims to objectivity of a philosopher, scientist or other thinker in the foundation of their theory or theories, and an effort to uncover subjective elements that enable the critic to dismiss the theorist's efforts. (The term "Hermeneutic" refers to the interpretive technique -- that is, the technique of interpreting phenomena -- that leads one to a given theory. Such a Hermeneutic can be described as fundamentally suspicious if it seeks to upend the interpretive technique of a prior theory by questioning its foundations in objectivity. We can then characterize a hermeneutics of suspicion as an interpretive technique which systematically questions the objective foundations of traditionally accepted theories). As such, the hermeneutic of suspicion is a kind of "flank attack" rather than a "frontal attack" on a theory. It was Ricoeur's claim that Marx, Nietzsche and Freud were expert practitioners of the technique. That strikes me as a viable theory.

The problem with the use of such esoteric language, however, is that it gets thrown around with similarly complex terms in an effort to establish intellectual credentials in lieu of offering anything cogent.

Note that Wikipedia doesn't have an article on this topic. That should tell you something. Indeed, I fully expect the reader to question the objectivity of this review of the term. It's also possible the reader may find that this view has viability. It's a pity this website has no feedback mechanism (as yet), for I'm sure it would be fascinating to see the how our postmodern skeptics would interpret my subjectivity in regard to this and other "definitions", especially those of an ontologically suspicious nature and those of a nominalist world view.