ABSTRACT
Alongside prophecy, another key genealogical element of critique is informal logic, drawn from Aristotle but banalised through contemporary ‘Critical Thinking’. While logic as mathematics is unproblematic, the uses of logic and reason within CT are predominantly to scrutinise and doubt the beliefs of others, accusing them of being irrational, emotional or biased. This chapter conducts a Foucauldian ‘archaeology’ of CT, focusing on how it produces knowledge by reducing language to premises and conclusions, and the vast array of logical errors it proposes. A brief analysis of the uses of reason and doubt in Descartes is offered, paralleled by Protestantism. Moving to the present, the chapter gives a detailed analysis of how contemporary CT guides motivate ungenerous critique, heroises the critical thinker as exceptional and gives no knowledge beyond doubt. This interpretation is supported by Argyrou on thought as a gift relation and Horvath’s notion of alchemy as deconstructive – atomising beliefs into a series of premises. Finally, the chapter examines the deployment of reason as critique in New Atheism, which reduces cultural beliefs to incompetent scientific reasoning.
