FROM SUSPICION TO RESTITUTION: HERMENEUTICS, YOUTH AND VALUE FORMATION IN THE DIGITAL AGE: A CONFERENCE GIVEN BY THE MOST REVERENT FATHER ARTHUR — SACRED HEART OF JESUS AUDITORIUM — AUGUST 19, 2025

Abstract

This analytical essay revisits the moral crisis of contemporary youth within the context of informational overload and algorithmic mediation in digital culture. Drawing on the critical lineage of the “masters of suspicion” — Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud — it reconstructs the genealogies that dismantled traditional moral and religious certainties, while discussing their implications for modern subjectivity. In dialogue with Paul Ricoeur’s hermeneutics, the study advances the notion of a hermeneutics of restoration — a movement that reclaims ethical meaning after the work of critique.

Methodologically, it proposes a mixed research design (hermeneutic-phenomenological, quantitative, and digital ethnographic) to examine how young individuals interpret and (re)construct values under algorithmic regimes. The results point to the necessity of public policies and educational practices that combine critical media literacy, ethical reflection, and youth co-design, transcending both economic determinism and moral nihilism.