Reframing the Masters of Suspicion: Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud

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This book revisits Paul Ricoeur's classification of Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Sigmund Freud as the “masters of suspicion”, and provides a thought-provoking critique for critical religious studies scholars, as well as anyone working in critical theory more broadly. Whereas Ricoeur saw suspicion as a mode of interpretation, Andrew Dole argues that the method common to his “masters” is better understood as a mode of explanation. Dole replaces Ricoeur's hermeneutics of suspicion with suspicious explanation, which claims the existence of hidden phenomena that are bad in some recognizable way. Each of the masters, Dole argues, offered a distinct kind of suspicious explanation. Reconstructing Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud in this way brings their work into conversation with conspiracy theories, which are themselves a type of suspicious explanation. Dole argues that conspiracy theories and other types of suspicious explanation are “cognitively ensnaring”, to borrow a term from Pascal Boyer. If they are true they are importantly true, but their truth or falsity can be very difficult to ascertain. Title page Copyright page Dedication Contents Acknowledgments Introduction Interpretation, explanation, and Paul Ricoeur Suspicious explanations The development of the “Hermeneutics of Suspicion” The philosophy of explanation Chapter summaries Concluding remarks Chapter 1 Suspicious Explanation: A Primer Causal explanation Agent explanations Ethical charge Large-scale social phenomena The conflict of explanations The “Cunning of Reason” Conclusion Chapter 2 Classic Suspicion: Marx Vulgar Marxism Historical materialism Vulgar-Hegelian Marxism On relationships among the three modes Marx and suspicion Conclusion Chapter 3 Classic Suspicion: Nietzsche The explanatory framework Nietzsche’s toolbox The first essay The second essay The third essay Nietzsche and suspicion Conclusion Chapter 4 Classic Suspicion: Freud Unconscious processes The materials of unconscious thought Freud’s social extension Freud and suspicion Freud’s recursive ad hominem defense Theory and the end of a friendship Chapter 5 Conclusion: Paradigms of Suspicion The masters of suspicion Suspicion’s Achilles’s Heel Suspicion and cognitive gadgetry Frankenstein’s theory Notes Acknowledgments Introduction 1 Suspicious Explanation: A Primer 2 Classic Suspicion: Marx 3 Classic Suspicion: Nietzsche 4 Classic Suspicion: Freud 5 Conclusion: Paradigms of Suspicion Bibliography Index