Critical Thinking and the Subject of Inquiry: Capacities, Resilience, and Power

This book redefines critical thinking. It is not a one-off skill. It requires the ongoing work of subjectivity and subjective activation—the capacities to make meaning, to judge, and to stand one’s ground in the face of pressures arising on all sides. This book explains why, without subjectivity, our ability to think critically collapses. It shows how to cultivate the capacities and resilience that keep subjective inquiry alive when it counts, helping teachers, learners, and trainers build the internal and inter-personal capacities that make critical thought possible.Endorsements“Matthew H. Bowker’s Critical Thinking and the Subject of Inquiry inspires readers, learners, and teachers to engage with the book’s central thesis that a crisis in critical thinking impedes our personal, social, and political development as subjects with agency. Bowker innovatively reformulates the critical thinking process as one where teachers and learners move from a skills-based method toward a facilitative approach that engages the person’s autonomy as a subject, not a passive object, of our surroundings. The goals of the work are further aided by insightful discussions—spanning the periods of ancient Greece to the mid-and-late twentieth century—of a variety thinkers and their problematics, all of whom provide rich cues for becoming better critical thinkers. In Bowker’s work, readers, learners, and teachers are provided with a rich armamentarium for dynamically continuing their engagement with the psychological, political, and epistemological horizons of our world.”— Jack Fong, Professor of Sociology, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona“Matthew H. Bowker’s book on critical thinking is probably the best work written on this deservedly fashionable topic. Unlike so many others, Bowker understands that critical thinking has to have something important to think about. The book’s second part, which covers Plato, Montaigne, Camus, Kafka, and others, illustrates what it means to think critically in a particular intellectual and cultural context. Of special interest is Bowker’s recognition that emotional states matter. Narcissists can’t learn. To learn requires that one first admit one’s ignorance. Authority and the pressures of conformity also impair critical thinking. Not just an introduction to critical thinking, Bowker’s is a tour de force from which the highly educated to the self-educated will benefit.”— C. Fred Alford, Professor of Government and Distinguished Scholar-Teacher Emeritus,University of Maryland, College Park“Critical thinking is a nearly ubiquitous term in education, but the best means of understanding and teaching critical thinking are unclear or elusive. Matthew H. Bowker has given us a psychologically grounded, realistic, and ultimately hopeful portrait of critical thinking as a capacity available to anyone who is willing to undertake the challenge of developing it. Bowker’s book is essential reading for students (both young and old), teachers at all levels, and anyone aspiring to find better ways of living within the challenges of our present moment.”— David W. McIvor, Ph.D., Professor of Political Science, Colorado State University Read more