Abstract

The second part “Philosophy of Suspicion, or rebellion against Apollo” of the article “Invention of Subjectivity and Philosophy of Suspicion” is dedicated to the phenomenon in European intellectual history, which received the name “philosophy of suspicion”. The metaphor of suspicion belongs to Friedrich Nietzsche, who at the beginning of his book “Human, All Too Human” claims that all his works are called “school of suspicion”. This gives Paul Ricoer reason in his “Conflict of Interpretations” to bring together Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud and Karl Marx, describing their thinking style as “exercises in suspicion”. This suspicion is directed primarily against the principle of subjectivity, which history of invention was described in the first part of this article, “The Invention of Subjectivity, or the Taming of Dionysus.” According to this principle, any person is an autonomous subject who freely makes decisions based on the knowledge they have acquired. Friedrich Nietzsche suspects that an irrational will to power is behind all this. Sigmund Freud points to the unconscious as a dark and opaque background of consciousness. Whereas Karl Marx shows how the various forms of human culture, which in his opinion are only parts of the superstructure based on an economical substructure; with one its main principles being alienation, which arises in the sphere of industrial production and extends to all human existence. What all three thinkers have in common is that behind the rationally ordered Apollonian world they see Dionysian chaos and darkness (if we use Nietzsche’s distinction between the Apollonian and Dionysian components of our human culture). That is why the philosophy of suspicion can be described as a rebellion against Apollo. At the same time, the question arises whether the irrational dark side of human history and culture is limited to those aspects that Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud and Karl Marx noticed, or whether there are more. However, the answer to this question clearly goes beyond the scope of this brief exploration.