The Historical Formation of the Institutional Framework of Critical Thinking: Ideological, Educational, Legal and Political Dimensions

Abstract

The article is devoted to the revealing of social and institutional preconditions for the emergence and development of critical thinking. The author proves the identity of phylogenetic and ontogenetic grounds for the emergence and development of critical thinking. Meanwhile, it is made an emphasis on the priority of the individual’s own culture of critical thinking. The prerequisites for the development of critical thinking are steadily growing in a society, a critical thinking becomes a recognized universal political virtue and social value in democratic society, thus it performs important social functions. However, despite all the necessary external reasons, only individual internal demand is sufficient ground for the
emergence and improvement of personal critical thinking. Social effects of critical thinking are possible only on the basis of its development in the members of society. A common set of abilities of critical thinking as well as the primary means of its institutional support are almost invariant to most contemporary societies. Still these invariants are more developed in democratic societies and to a lesser extent — in authoritarian and totalitarian ones. Critical thinking requires special and systematic development. It is not a natural gift that one person gets more than the other, but on the contrary, almost regardless of his natural talents, one who is more developed at critical thinking, is more successful in its application, than the one who does it less or even relies on natural intuition. Private efforts to develop critical thinking, however, are only part of its production — a generation of people in the community one by one creates an social environment where it is impossible not to develop critical thinking. Everybody in society develops this kind of thinking 
unless spontaneously, even against his will. Most of these social conditions for critical thinking are formed through social institutions of society, formed as a result of a long historical development and make a unique institutional structure of the society, which is an important component of this internal social framework conditions for the development of critical thinking.