Critical Thinking vs. Critical Consciousness

This article explores four kinds of critical thinking. The first is found in Socratic dialogues, which employ critical thinking mainly to reveal logical fallacies in common opinions, thus cleansing superior minds of error and leaving philosophers free to contemplate universal verities. The second is critical interpretation (hermeneutics) which began as the attempt to reveal the hidden meanings of pagan oracles and the sacred texts of the Abrahamic religions, and evolved through sociology into contemporary literary criticism and semiotics. Third are the analytical techniques that comprise a set of instructions about "how to think" in accordance with the scientific method and technological rationality. Finally, there is radical criticism that interrogates every kind of inquiry and knowledge (including science) to reveal the human interests that they serve. Of the distinctively modern kinds of critical thinking, analytical techniques serve as the unofficial ideology of contemporary education. In the alternative, radical criticism--commonly but not inevitably associated with the Marxist tradition--questions that ideology, and produces a critical consciousness that dissents from the dominant pedagogy and politics of college life. All four--Socratic dialogues, hermeneutics, critical analysis and critical consciousness--are important precursors to, or examples of, critical thinking.