Roger Kimball

Author and Magazine Editor, New Criterion

"Criticismism" (sic) 'Thinking Critically About Critical Thinking'"
09/29/2005


When Otto von Bismarck warned that "We must never  ook into the origin of laws or sausages," he articulated a principle diametrically opposed to the Enlightenment ideal of intellectual exposure, summed up in Kant's motto for the Enlightenment: "Sapere aude," Dare to Know!  What we call "critical thinking" today  is an heir—often a wayward heir--of the Enlightenment project of making man autonomous by elevating human reason at the expense of the customary and conventional.

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