4 ms·

Re [1] - critical is a word.

the_third_wave 5y ago
It is. It has a specific meaning which can be found in printed dictionaries from a few years ago. While language evolves and words can gain new meanings in time this process has been radically sped up in the last few years with the emergence of a multitude of "critical" theories into the public discourse - critical race theory being the one most often mentioned but there are many more. What these all have in common is that they are off-shoots of Critical Theory [1] which Encyclopaedia Britannica describes as [a] Marxist-inspired movement in social and political philosophy originally associated with the work of the Frankfurt School. Drawing particularly on the thought of Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud, critical theorists maintain that a primary goal of philosophy is to understand and to help overcome the social structures through which people are dominated and oppressed. One of the hallmarks of these "critical" theories is that they tend to use common words like "critical" to indicate different concepts [2] from those which these words actually mean, hence the distinction. The critical eye to be used should be the one following the concept outlined in §2.2 of the Oxford English Dictionary's description of the adjective critical: 2.2 Involving the objective analysis and evaluation of an issue in order to form a judgement. ‘professors often find it difficult to encourage critical thinking amongst their students’ When words change their meaning in a natural way this is called language evolution. When this change is being pushed to serve an agenda it is called language revolution, or revolutionary language. That is why I made the distinction between a critical eye and an eye guided by critical theory. [1] https://www.britannica.com/topic/critical-theory https://www.britannica.com/topic/critical-theory [2] https://newdiscourses.com/tftw-critical/ https://newdiscourses.com/tftw-critical/

It is. It has a specific meaning which can be found in printed dictionaries from a few years ago. While language evolves and words can gain new meanings in time this process has been radically sped up in the last few years with the emergence of a multitude of "critical" theories into the public discourse - critical race theory being the one most often mentioned but there are many more. What these all have in common is that they are off-shoots of Critical Theory [1] which Encyclopaedia Britannica describes as [a] Marxist-inspired movement in social and political philosophy originally associated with the work of the Frankfurt School. Drawing particularly on the thought of Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud, critical theorists maintain that a primary goal of philosophy is to understand and to help overcome the social structures through which people are dominated and oppressed. One of the hallmarks of these "critical" theories is that they tend to use common words like "critical" to indicate different concepts [2] from those which these words actually mean, hence the distinction. The critical eye to be used should be the one following the concept outlined in §2.2 of the Oxford English Dictionary's description of the adjective critical: 2.2 Involving the objective analysis and evaluation of an issue in order to form a judgement. ‘professors often find it difficult to encourage critical thinking amongst their students’ When words change their meaning in a natural way this is called language evolution. When this change is being pushed to serve an agenda it is called language revolution, or revolutionary language. That is why I made the distinction between a critical eye and an eye guided by critical theory. [1] https://www.britannica.com/topic/critical-theory https://www.britannica.com/topic/critical-theory [2] https://newdiscourses.com/tftw-critical/ https://newdiscourses.com/tftw-critical/