| dc.description.abstract | The article presents some critical thoughts on “critical thinking" and criticism as such.
According to the author, in recent decades the very term has become so widely applied in
various fields of intellectual and cultural activity that its basic meaning is now hard to
establish. In general, it supports the “culture of argument" (D. Tannen) which is oriented
towards confrontation and polemic, and not towards achieving consensus. The three
areas in which the notions of criticism and critical thinking are being used with particular
frequency are discussed: education, academic discourse and art&culture. In education,
“critical thinking" is nothing more than a contemporary equivalent of traditional logical
and rational argumentation, and therefore represents Western logocentrism. In academic
discourse on the other hand it tends to be treated as a manifestation of an antilogocentric
attitude (vide: discourse analysis and criticism, cultural criticism). Finally, such phenomena
as “critical art" or “critical museum" are deeply rooted in the counter−culture movements
of the 1960s and 1970s, and their political bias seriously weakens their creative potential. | pl_PL |
