ABSTRACT
Hermeneutic philosophy could counter with the persuasive point that criticism is dependent on the object of its attack for its own motives; in the light of this insight, the claim to be able to proceed from a position free of prejudice appears as naive or as entangled in the illusion of absolute enlightenment. Ricoeur's mediatory efforts arrive at the conclusion that to the extent to which hermeneutic philosophy and critique of ideology insist on their radically different interests, they are both ideological, which in Ricoeur's use of the term means illusory. Having shown that the existential appropriation of the 'world' displayed in a text necessitates some element of critique – a view which Gadamer surely would not object to – Ricoeur now turns to the critique of ideology in order to attempt a symmetrical result by evidencing its hermeneutic situatedness.
