Merold Westphal’s Appropriation of Paul Ricoeur’s "Hermeneutics of Suspicion"
This article analyzes the main ideas of Paul Ricoeur’s hermeneutics of suspicion and espe-cially its reception in Merold Westphal’s philosophy of religion. The author shows that Ri-coeur’s concept of hermeneutics can be used not only as a theory for understanding texts but also as an effective methodology of historical and philosophical analysis as well as the inter-pretation of various aspects of social life. The author also shows that the use of a hermeneutics of suspicions in relation to the field of religious phenomena is a powerful tool for deciphering and unmasking religious illusions and latent sources of human behavior. The criticism of reli-gion by Freud, Marx, and Nietzsche is akin to the traditional Christian doctrine of the sinful-ness of human nature. For this reason, the author proposes to consider the hermeneutics of suspicion as an effective means of reminding religious communities about the necessity of constant self-examination and self-criticism.