Paul Ricoeur’s early work in hermeneutics dealt with bringing phenomenology (translation: the study of human consciousness) into dialogue with hermeneutics. He claimed not to be interested in synthesizing the two into one new philosophical system—an impossibility anyway, according to hermeneutics—but he did emphasize the importance of how the two together can aid interpretation.
Building on Freud, Marx, and Nietzsche, Ricoeur developed a “hermeneutics of suspicion,” an approach to interpretation that stressed the presence and effects of false consciousness in the beliefs people form. Basically the Sherlock Holmes of literary analysis.
So, if consciousness is our fundamental access to the world of meaning, but consciousness can be deluded or deceived, then our access to meaning may be blocked or distorted. What we take for conscious beliefs and decisions may be the product of the inner workings of our unconscious. Spooky huh? Yup—we may even be wrong about our own beliefs and why we do what we do.
Have you ever had the experience of reacting to something you read or watched in a way that surprised you? You find yourself sad or angry or disturbed, and you’re not sure why. If you tried to figure out why you reacted this way, you might have contemplated your life experiences, trying to pinpoint an event or occurrence that apparently affected you in ways you didn’t realize. That’s hermeneutics.
As the unconscious affects the reader, it also affects the writer. How does the influence of the unconscious put authorial intention into doubt?