فیلیپس و کاربرد دینیِ هرمنوتیک تأمل

Paul Ricoeur had distinguished two general approaches to hermeneutics including “the hermeneutics of recollection” and “the hermeneutics of suspicion”. He, himself, was the innovator of a third approach which he has called “the hermeneutics of contemplation”. The hermeneutics of recollection is understanding-based and realistic. In this approach, the interpreter assumes a reality behind the text and tries to understand it. The hermeneutics of suspicion denies every sense and reality behind the text and has a pessimistic view on religious reality, interprets the text according to interpreter’s mentality and finally, claims that religious belief is an illusion. D. Z. Phillips, regarding Ricoeur’s hermeneutics, criticizes both kinds of hermeneutical approaches and on the basis of religious experience, applies his version of the hermeneutics of contemplation to understand religious text. In Phillips’s view, this approach to hermeneutics is immune to the criticisms on former two approaches and it responds to the criticisms proposed by suspicionist, while it does not assume reality of The religious like recollectionists.. His hermeneutics of contemplation is an approach to understanding of religious text that concentrates on the function of religious concepts in life