Criticism of Critical Thinking

Abstract

The text deals with the term “critical thinking”, so popular in today’s educational theories and even amongst philosophers. If a critic should be radical, they should be consistent, in this case, meaning that one who insist on critical thinking should subject the critical thinking itself to criticism. The hypothesis is that this term is logically inconsistent but also problematic in a broader philosophical, metaphysical, and anthropological context. Namely, we will try to show that this currently fashionable term “critical thinking “is the result of an overarching “scientism” dominant in the interpretation of the world and especially in the interpretation of human and social phenomena. The notion of “critical thinking “, in our opinion, is a direct result of today’s predominant scientific culture derived from the capitalist, economic logic that reduces the world to statistics and thus a human being to an exclusively rational being. Human nature is far more complex than a rational calculus needed just to improve productivity in economic processes. This reductionist logic, unfortunately, also became omnipresent in today’s philosophical culture.