Critical Thinking as Dialectics: a Hegelian-Marxist Approach

Admitting that the peculiarity of education doesn‟t merely lie in the acquisition of knowledge, as a compilation of data, but that it refers to the fostering, within the pedagogical relationship, of universal human capabilities, the ability to think to be cardinal among them, and if, the critical examination of things is considered as the quintessence of thinking, then, critical thinking is an organic and fundamental element of the meaning of education. Elements of critical thinking are to be found in the function of human intellect in general. In the present paper, however, we will attempt to demonstrate that critical thinking in its most achieved form is identified with dialectics. Dialectical thought is the most authentic form of the mind‟s critical activity. By dialectics we mean the faculty of the mind to grasp and represent the whole development process of its cognitive object.

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