Thinking for Ourselves: The Good Life and the Art of Critical Thinking

Part I in a Series Exploring the Art of Critical Thinking in Pursuit of Living Well

Human survival depends upon having vital necessities like food, water, shelter, and healthcare. So it’s understandable that so many of us concentrate on acquiring material possessions when it comes to living a good life. But we sometimes overlook the fact that living well—being a good person, being happy, and living to our fullest human potential—requires more than the stuff of survival. A good life requires good thinking, and good thinking is the goal of critical thinking.

Critical thinking isn’t just any kind of thinking. To think well, to think critically is an art—a skill—requiring study, practice, and conscious effort to master. Just as we should not expect to develop the ability to pilot an airplane, play an instrument, or perform a medical procedure without intentionally developing those skills, we should not expect to master the art of thinking without concentrated dedication and effort.

The problem, of course, is that thinking is natural to us in a way that flying a plane, playing the violin, and conducting surgery is not, so it seems strange to suggest there’s an “art” to thinking well. The confusion is this: anyone can think, in the generic sense, just as anyone can press buttons in an airplane cockpit, cacophonously drag a bow across the strings of a violin, or imprecisely and arbitrarily wield a scalpel. But it takes skill, understanding, and practice to think well just as it takes skill, knowledge, and effort to fly a plane well, elicit harmony from a violin, and ensure the the surgeon’s scalpel enhances rather than harms a patient’s health.

What is Critical Thinking?

Though the phrase “critical thinking” is bandied around a lot, it's rarely defined beyond cliches like “thinking out of the box,” “asking questions,” or “deep thinking.” Though these characterizations aren’t necessarily wrong, they don’t get at the essence of the concept and practice. Even more problematic is the tendency to define the concept in strict relation to its practical function “on the job” or “in the classroom.” Over the years, many students have shared that the “Critical Thinking” they came to know boiled down to knowing how to navigate or complete school assignments. And though critical thinking certainly can aid us in school and on the job, to define critical thinking in narrow relation to these domains would be like defining “cars” as things driven to win races or to get us to work. Just as there’s more to cars, there’s more to critical thinking.

Critical thinking isn’t specific to a single domain of human existence. Critical thinking is no more specific to being a doctor than it is to being a mechanic or parent; and critical thinking is as important to loving others, being a good person, and experiencing happiness as it is to getting, keeping and performing well at a job.

Critical thinking isn’t just thinking “hard” or thinking “a lot.” Someone spending a lot of time in unskilled and closed-minded reflection is not thinking critically. Neither is critical thinking primarily about “being smart” or “having a degree.” Grasping the meaning of critical thinking allows us to make sense of the confounding fact that some rather smart people can think and live unwisely.

To summarize what this series will discuss in greater detail, to think critically is to take responsibility for our thinking, and therefore life, by determining what is true through concentrated reflection, research, and reasoning. More specifically, critical thinking is self-aware and reasoned thought guided by openness, fairness, logical consistency, humility, courage, creativity, and compassion.

Independent Thinking and Intellectual Responsibility

Thinking critically means taking responsibility to justify ourselves: explaining the reasons for the beliefs or claims we hold and advocate for. In a word, we are called to embrace intellectual independence.

It's no small irony that “self-reliance” is, today, primarily understood as relating to economic agency though one of its earliest American champions was chiefly concerned with independence of thought. Author and lecturer, Ralph Waldo Emerson’s 1841 work, “Self-reliance,” challenged self-respecting readers to take responsibility to do their own thinking rather than passively resign themselves to the dominant opinion of common sense. He wrote,

“Whoso would be a man, must be a non-conformist…. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world….

“I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and dead institutions.”

Emerson later wrote that it was easy to think independently when we were removed from the crowd, but the mark of intellectual maturity and character was the capacity to maintain independence of thought amidst the crowd.

“What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think…. It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.”

Emerson’s emphasis on intellectual self-sufficiency resounded ideas raised some 70-years earlier by the German philosopher, Immanuel Kant. In his essay, “An Answer to the Question: ‘What is Enlightenment’” (1784), Kant described the motto of the Enlightenment as daring to “use your own reason” and criticized those who left the work of thinking critically to various societal authorities.

“If I have a book which understands for me, a pastor who has a conscience for me, a physician who decides my diet, and so forth, I need not trouble myself. I need not think. If I can only pay—others will readily undertake the irksome work for me.”

Such a state of dependency compromises our individuality and autonomy. We allow ourselves to become like “dumb” domesticated cattle unwilling to “take a step without the harness of the cart” and the direction of social “guardians.” Kant wrote,

"...the guardians then show them the danger which threatens if they try to go alone. Actually, however, this danger is not so great, for by falling a few times they would finally learn to walk alone.”

By daring to embrace and make use of our unique capacity to reason—to think in a manner that differentiates appearance from reality, the inessential from essential, the means from the ends—we exemplify the state of being we call autonomy.

Like Kant and Emerson, the 20th century feminist author, Adrienne Rich, lauded intellectual independence. Unlike the two men, Rich challenged the androcentric conception of independence of mind to be inherently “manly.” In her 1977 convocation speech, “Claiming an Education” at Douglass college, Rich urged women to embrace their fuller human agency by refusing to passively “receive” their education. Instead they needed to actively claim their education by taking responsibility for their own thinking.

“Responsibility to yourself means refusing to let others do your thinking, talking, and naming for you; it means learning to respect and use your own brains and instinct; hence, grappling with hard work.”

Forty-six years later, Rich's advice to women remains timely and worth heeding. Thinking critically doesn't mean "going it alone"—we don't have every necessary expertise, experience, or insight—but it does mean taking the time and making the effort to do more than "consume" or passively accept popular, prominent, or just plain easy answers. For an idea or belief to really be ours, we need to take the time to ask the right questions, hear competing perspectives, and examine that belief in the light of our own experiences and understanding. Doing this ensures we not only have the "right" belief but also one we are justified in claiming as our own.

Critical thinking challenges us all to stand on our own cognitive feet instead of leaning on the easy and vaunted pillars of common sense: tradition, popular opinion, and external authority. Following many great thinkers before him, Albert Einstein recognized common sense as an obstacle to original thought and the pursuit of knowledge. In The Universe and Dr. Einstein (1948), Lincoln Barnett explained that Einstein viewed common sense as

“actually nothing more than a deposit of prejudices laid down in the mind prior to the age of eighteen. Every new idea one encounters in later years must combat this accretion of 'self-evident' concepts. And it is because of Einstein's unwillingness ever to accept any unproven principle as self-evident that he was able to penetrate closer to the underlying realities of nature than any scientist before him.”

Our contemporary education system urges students to take up specialized knowledge tracks earlier and earlier in their academic career, in preference over generalized curriculums rooted in the liberal arts. In his time, Einstein urged against prioritizing specialized knowledge in educational systems. In an October 15, 1936 speech on education, Einstein explained why he believed independent thinking should be the focus.

“The development of general ability for independent thinking and judgment should always be placed foremost, not the acquisition of special knowledge. If a person masters the fundamentals of his subject and has learned to think and work independently, he will surely find his way and besides will better be able to adapt himself to progress and changes than the person whose training principally consists in the acquiring of detailed knowledge.”

According to Einstein, generalizable thinking skills formed a foundation upon which any specialized interest could be built. What’s more, a failure to cultivate originality and independence of thought in schooling would foster socially damaging standardization.

“For a community of standardized individuals without personal originality and personal aims would be a poor community without possibilities for development. On the contrary, the aim must be the training of independently acting and thinking individuals, who, however, see in the service of the community their highest life problem.”

As Einstein suggests, the aims of independent thought transcend purely individualistic interests. A society of independent thinkers is a society capable of fostering positive social change and protecting humanity from the prominent inclination among social beings to defer to others—to custom, popular opinion, and power.

Great thinkers throughout human history have consistently recognized that critical thinking entails ethical thinking. As an 18-year-old student at Morehouse College put it in an essay titled, “The Purpose of Education” (1947), the goal of education was greater than enhancing the intellect. “Intelligence plus character,” wrote the young Martin Luther King, Jr., “—that is the goal of true education.” Only those with humane sensitivity to others, and compassionate concern for their sufferings and oppressions, are rightly counted among the critical thinkers.

Critical Thinking is More than Intelligence

Though much more needs to be said about what critical thinking is, we can conclude by reiterating King’s point that it is much more than “intelligence.” In The Sane Society (1955), Erich Fromm distinguished between intelligence, understood as an instrument of practical aims, and reason, a vital human faculty enabling us to see the underlying truths hidden beneath the superficial surface of everyday experience and thought.

“Intelligence, in this sense, is taking things for granted as they are, making combinations which have the purpose of facilitating their manipulation; intelligence is thought in the service of biological survival. Reason, on the other hand, aims at understanding; it tries to find out what is behind the surface, to recognize the kernel, the essence of the reality which surrounds us. Reason is not without a function, but its function is not to further physical as much as mental and spiritual existence.”

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Reason, as Fromm explains it, is more than the ability to mechanistically “processing” information and solving problems as though we were programs or machines. Human reason enables us to distinguish the primary from secondary, the ends from the means. As we will explore later, reason, understood in this way, is a vital and essential faculty comprising critical thinking.

The ultimate aim of critical thinking is wisdom rather than intellectual performance. The contemporary philosopher and public intellectual, Cornell West, has wittyly made the point that we ought to prioritize wisdom over intelligence this way: “Let the phones be smart. You be wise.” Wisdom goes beyond “having” handed-down truths and living a life of “success” as defined by tradition, popular opinion, or power. As Erich Fromm eloquently expressed the point, in To Have or To Be? (1976), great thinkers throughout the ages and across cultures have taught

“knowing begins with the awareness of the deceptiveness of our common sense perceptions, in the sense that our picture physical reality does not correspond to what is ‘really real’ and, mainly, in the sense that most people are half-awake, half-dreaming, and are unaware that most of what they hold to be true and self-evident is illusion produced by the suggestive influence of the social world in which they live. Knowing, then, begins with the shattering of illusions, with disillusionment….”

Fromm crucially conceived of “knowing” as an activity, distinct from “having knowledge,” understood as a set of ideas and beliefs that we have acquired or possess. The distinction exemplifies what Fromm described as the “being” mode of human existence and stands in contrast to the “having" mode. “Having knowledge is taking and keeping possession of available knowledge (information); knowing is functional and part of the process of productive thinking.” The specific function of knowing, in the active and self-aware sense, is to push past the artificial and trivial in pursuit of deeper, more meaningful relationship to truth and therefore life. As he wrote,

“Knowing means to penetrate through the surface, in order to arrive at the roots, and hence the causes.”

The knowledge sought by the critical thinker is not a static state of enlightenment nor is it an object of possession. We do not “have” or “own” truth and we never arrive at a final and completed state of “critical thinking.” The knowing of the critical thinker is akin to the love of a lover who renews their commitment, care, and understanding of their beloved each day. “Knowing does not mean to be in possession of the truth,” writes Fromm, “it means to penetrate the surface and to strive critically and actively in order to approach truth ever more closely.” In place of existing in a state of passivity and conformity, wisdom entails living in a dynamic state of knowing, authenticity, and autonomy.

Critical thinking and its emphasis of self-examination insists that we understand the reasons upon which our beliefs rest and the implications they dictate for the rest of our worldview and decisions. The critical thinker wants more than to “possess” an accidentally true belief. The critical thinker aims for understanding the basis of their beliefs, which in turn informs their actions. The difference is not trivial. To understand the basis of our beliefs is to authentically relate ourselves to those beliefs and the world. And that authenticity and understanding, in turn, enables us to live actively and autonomously.

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