ABSTRACT
The author argues that critical thinking (CT) is not simply an intellectual virtue: It is less than the virtues in that its critical spirit component involves dispositions, habits of mind, and character traits; it is more than the virtues in that its reason assessment component involves all the abilities required to assess reasons in epistemically respectable ways, which the intellectual virtues do not. Educating Reason defends components of critical thinking, according to which a critical thinker has mastered both the reason assessment and critical spirit components. Shari Tishman, Eileen Jay, and David N. Perkins are clear that the relevant abilities and dispositions are distinct, that one can have the former but not the latter, and that it is educationally important to foster both. A well-known divide among intellectual virtue theorists separates them into reliabilist and responsibilist camps. If people are concerned to help students become intellectually virtuous critical thinkers, their proper educational task includes more than fostering the intellectual virtues.
