The development of critical thinking as an attitude in higher education: the literary text as educative resource

Abstract

Critical thinking is a much demanded capacity among university students, but at this stage of education we have few tools to carry it out. We postulate that part of the problem may be due to the industrial-technological approach of the current educational curricula. Secondly, we analyze the general management of the concept of critical thinking among university professors that is commonly handled. While the concept has been classically divided between skills and attitudes, teachers seem to focus more on cognitive skills. We propose a recovery of the moral habit and attitude in the concept that are also part of the critical exercise without denying the importance of skills. The recovery of habit will be developed through two capacities whose philosophical tradition dates back to Hanna Arendt’s thesis on the agent who collaborates with evil: the one who cannot intuit the moral conditions of his actions due to pure and simple thoughtlessness. Namely, there are two capacities to develop: critique of authority and moral imagination. Finally, through the last capacity we will justify the proposal of the use of literary texts as a formation of critical thinking in the university, although it does not exclude other formative stages. The attitude that emerges from the constant exercise of critical thinking actively collaborates with a healthy democracy that cannot leave cultural tradition behind.