Soviet atheism revisited in jest

This is of course a huge topic, but I recently stumbled across a mock-nostalgia page on the Soviet Union, with particular mock-nostalgia for the Stalin era:

Cyber-USSR:
"A realm where no kulak goes un-liquidated, no five-year-plan goes un-overfulfilled, and no Great Leader and Teacher goes un-venerated."

Contents of this site can be found here:

Charter of the Cyber-USSR

So, from the period of stagnation:

Moscow University, 1977-1978: Courses on atheism

And from the period of "militant atheism" in the 1920s:

Some anti-religious cartoons and articles in the journal Bezbozhnik (1924, 1927).

There are several links on this page to sample materials in Russian, including covers of this periodical directed against Judaism, Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam. (What, no Hinduism?)

"Militant atheism" in the USSR was crude, and in the Stalin period, became even cruder, with a sledgehammer ideological and instrumentalist approach accompanying "socialist construction". This crudity, accompanying the virtual deification of Stalin, is what a peasant society undergoing crash modernization gives you, a monstrosity the likes of which were not to be seen again until Mao's Cultural Revolution.

3 takes on critical thinking

As I have noted before, I have a problem with the theory and practice of critical thinking. From my web guide and links you will be able to see why:

Thinking Critically About Critical Thinking: A Guide

Now here are some recently encountered examples of the problem:

(1) For a Better Society, Teach Philosophy in High Schools by Michael Shammas, The Huffington Post, 12/26/2012

This piece of airheaded fluff disproves the author's thesis. It's typical of a spineless formal liberalism that in fact commits itself to nothing other than the image of its own niceness. It is the clueless bourgeois ideology of an "open-mindedness" that means nothing, and an especially stupid specimen of it.

But since we are on the subject, you should know there is a whole literature on teaching philosophy in the classroom from early childhood on up. See the section on Philosophy for Children in my 'Intellectual Life in Society, Conventional and Unconventional: A Bibliography in Progress'.

(2) Five Critical Thinkers on Television by Breanne Harris, Critical Thinkers, July 26, 2010

Aside from this post being fluff, this web site is a representative of an entrepreneurial/consulting outfit, and the spin as well as the limits of the application of 'critical thinking' in an entrepreneurial setting should be evident. Bourgeois professionals are not prone to turning critical thinking on themselves except in that pseudo-detached fashion outlined in the first example. The exception I suppose is that small corner of left-liberal academia preoccupied by reflexivity, which translates into the politics of guilt.

(3) Educational Objective: Critical Thinking Skills, Ruthless Criticism

This little article is in a whole different category, as is this far left web site. The problem with several articles on this site is that there is no mediating analysis between the abstract concepts under review and the particulars of a political/social configuration in a way that would give us more than generalities.

If you read this article carefully, you should see that its critique applies to the tacit ideologies of the first two examples, especially the first. I do not find this to be an adequate critique, but it contains essential elements of a critique of 'critical thinking' that dovetails with my own.

The first point in this criticism relates to the educational emphasis on the critical subject, i.e. self-criticism. While the student is urged to be self-critical, where does one find the discussion of the objects that one can or should or cannot or should not be critical of? The sense of neutrality, of even-handedness and the avoidance of partisanship, is mocked, as it deserves.

The second admonition of the educational ideology of critical thinking, is skepticism. Again, there is an implicit critique of the formalism by which one can subjectively approach any topic with a skeptical point of view without actually knowing anything one way or the other. Note the criticism of the indifference to content.

Third, there is a criticism of relativization, that is, of the posture of modesty, which I presume to be an aspect of the posture of even-handedness and impartiality which is presumed to be ethically superior to 'ideology', extremism, partisanship.

Fourthly, there is a criticism of the presumption that there is a general critical capacity that needs only be awakened. This criticism and article ends most aptly, pooh-poohing "the possibility of criticizing something specific is supposed to exist in abstraction from each specific criticism, namely in the individual and not in what he has to criticize."

Such critiques of critical thinking seem to be very rare, at least in this part of the world. All these points are good ones, but the argument is far too adumbrated: without further exposition, the reader is likely to fail to grasp these points and to fill in the missing pieces of the argument as well as its necessary correlative overall structure.  This does nevertheless add something to my critique of the formalist, approach endemic to the critical thinking industry, without degenerating to postmodernist irrationalism.

Science education & critical thinking in higher education

Rethinking the Way Colleges Teach Critical Thinking 
By Scott K. Johnson | Scientific American, December 14, 2012

Facing both conservative dogmatism and the decline in college students' critical thinking skills, the author is concerned about about the enhancement of both science education and the capacity of the people to engage in critical evaluation of knowledge claims. He is dissatisfied with the traditional approach: "Scientific literacy and critical thinking skills are seen as natural side-effects of studying a science."Opposing the tendency to reduce education to rote learning, even of science, the author proposes "an entire semester on critical thinking and the nature of science."

Where standalone critical thinking courses exist, however, they are mostly found within the humanities and social sciences. Those courses often center on argumentation and literary criticism, or instead on the philosophy of logic, but there are opportunities to expand this— particularly by giving science a larger presence. 

Johnson advocates the teaching of logic, rhetoric, cognitive biases and pitfalls,and the scientific method. Critical thinking courses are readily adaptable to the critique of American culture, and the incorporation of objective knowledge, or rather investigation of the basis for knowledge claims and determining their objective basis, is also useful. Such courses would have to be interdisciplinary.

Contrary to the criticism that classes like this would merely be weekly exercises in debunking, critical thinking is as much about problem solving and extracting meaning from complexity as it is about not falling for hokum. (Of course, conspiracy theories and sasquatches would certainly make an appearance.) And this is where science fits in so naturally. Practice with a scientific way of thinking—developing conclusions that flow from the data, rather than cherry-picking data to support your pre-existing conclusion—adds such an important tool to the kit.

To this I would add my own comment: note that in order to exercise critical thinking, there is an actual knowledge base that has to be acquired; there has to be content and a real-world background off which to bounce critical perspectives, which cannot exist in a formalistic vacuum. And, as the author insists, mere teaching of content does not guarantee the capacity for critical thinking. With this in mind, see my bibliography:

Thinking Critically About Critical Thinking:A Guide

In my introduction I criticize both the old formalist and the new postmodernist conceptions of critical thinking. See especially the paragraph that begins:

While traditional elaborations of the formal characteristics of critical thinking are always useful, they do not guarantee the ability to think critically in real-world ideological, social, practical contexts. I contend that in effect there is no such thing as critical thinking in general, and that critical thinking is not formal, but content-driven. Here I am not thinking merely of credentials or qualifications, though such are customarily necessary in our time for scientific advances. Assuming legitimate expertise, the problem is that experts in one area may be cretins in others or in matters of common concern, because they are not at heart critical thinkers, or because they don't know how to engage other areas of inquiry, for lack of knowledge, the proper analytical skills or knowledge base, familiarity, etc. Furthermore, amateurs can be critical thinkers in the areas in which they are not experts, but to do so they have to engage enough of the content so that they can formulate meaningful questions.

Lenin: On Religion

I knew that this little book existed, but it is not easy to find these days. I wasn't sure whether I had a copy buried in my archive, but I found one. I know I read this many many years ago, and found it eye-opening. I've already blogged about several of the essays anthologized here. The ones I missed on my own, but which are included in this collection, are: (1) Tolstoy; (2) Classes and Parties; (3) Working Women's Congress; (4) Draft Programme.

Lenin, V. I. On Religion. 3rd rev. ed. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1969. 83 pp.

Preface to the Russian Edition

"Socialism and Religion," in Collected Works, Volume 10 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1965), pp. 83-87. Originally published in Novaya Zhizn, No. 28, December 3, 1905.

"Leo Tolstoy as the Mirror of the Russian Revolution," in Collected Works, Volume 15 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1973), pp. 202-209. Originally published in Proletary No. 35, September 11 (24), 1908.

"The Attitude of the Workers’ Party to Religion" [translated by Andrew Rothstein and Bernard Issacs], in Lenin's Collected Works (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1973), Volume 15, pp. 402-413. From Proletary, No. 45, May 13 (26), 1909. (Also available on the From Marx to Mao site.)

"Classes and Parties in Their Attitude to Religion and the Church,"in Collected Works (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1973), Volume 15, pp. 414-424. Originally published in Sotsial-Demokrat, No. 6, June 4 (17), 1909.

V. I. Lenin to Maxim Gorky, written on November 13 or 14, 1913 [translated by Andrew Rothstein], in Lenin's Collected Works (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1976), Volume 35, pp. 121-124 [#55]. First published in Pravda No. 51, March 2, 1924. Sent from Cracow to Capri. (Text also available on From Marx to Mao site.)

V. I. Lenin to Maxim Gorky, written in the second half of November 1913 [translated by Andrew Rothstein], in Lenin's Collected Works (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1976), Volume 35, pp. 127-129 [#58]. First published in 1924 in Lenin Miscellany I. Sent from Cracow to Capri. (Text also available on From Marx to Mao site.)

Speech at the First All-Russia Congress of Working Women, November 19, 1918, in Collected Works (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1974), Volume 28, pp. 180-182. [On Religion states: Newspaper report published in Izvestia, no. 253, November 20, 1918.]

From the Draft Programme of the R.C.P.(B.: Section of the Programme Dealing With Religion, in Collected Works, 4th English Edition (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1972), Volume 29, p. 134 (out of pp. 97-140).

"The Tasks of the Youth Leagues", Speech Delivered At The Third All-Russia Congress of The Russian Young Communist League, in Lenin's Collected Works (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1966), Vol. 31, pp. 283-99. Speech written and.or delivered on October 2, 1920, published in Pravda, Nos. 221, 222 and 223, October 5, 6 and 7, 1920. (Also available on the From Marx to Mao site.)

"On the Significance of Militant Materialism" (12 March 1922), in Lenin’s Collected Works (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1972), Volume 33, 1972, pp. 227-236. First published in Pod Znamenem Marksizma, No. 3, March 1922. (Text also available on From Marx to Mao site.)

Notes

Name Index

Max Horkheimer, Montaigne, & bourgeois skepticism (2)

Bildung and Critical Theory facing Post-modernity by Ilan Gur-Ze'ev

The postmodernity part and the conclusions are insufferable ("critical pedagogy" has always struck me as idiotic) but the content concerning the Frankfurt School and Bildung is interesting.

Here's the passage specifically about Montaigne:

A clear manifestation of this optimist-positive utopianism is Horkheimer's "Montaigne and the role of skepticism." From within the Marxist tradition Horkheimer here articulates the importance and weaknesses of modern, bourgeois skepticism, which is a central element of Enlightenment and the project of Bildung. Because the bourgeoisie have the upper hand, claims Horkheimer, the worth of the individual becomes mainly an economic issue and the critical Spirit becomes an individual’s aesthetic pastime. Skepticism, he claims, is targeted at saving the individual. This is its great goal. But Critical Theory, in opposition to this tradition, conceives the individual as basically dependent on social conditions and understands her emancipation as part of the liberation of humanity, coming about within an essential change in the social totality. This new society, according to the early Horkheimer, will actualize Montaigne's quest for the happy realization of the essence of the human.

It's hard to imagine an academic department more worthless than Education, "Critical Pedagogy" included, unless it's Political Science. Anyway, here's another specimen:

Adorno, Horkheimer, Critical Theory and the Possibility of a Non-Repressive Critical Pedagogy by Ilan Gur-Ze’ev

Horkeimer's essay on Montaigne is mentioned here, too. And here at least is a critique of Henry Giroux, his descent into postmodernism, and his misunderstanding of Marcuse (who also comes under fire) and other critical theorists. The author also recapitulates the development of the ideas of Horkheimer and Adorno.

What does all this come to?

Counter-education, if true to itself, cannot be, like Critical Pedagogy wants us to believe, an attempt to implement any “theory”, as sophisticated or good-intentioned as it may be. If true to itself, counter-education must challenge any theoretical, ideological, or political "home", any master signifier, dogma, or ethnocentrism as manifestations of the Same, of the thingness in Being, which human beings are called to guard and transcend (Heidegger 196, 234). Counter-education, in this sense, must be at once Messianic and negative at any cost. This means that it cannot satisfy itself even with identification with the negation of self-evident, with the resistance to the ethnocentrism of the oppressed and cannot identify itself with the “worthier” violences they actualize against their own "internal" and "external" Others.

Ugh! I can't go on.

Re-thinking reason in the service of postmodern irrationalism

Re-thinking Reason: New Perspectives in Critical Thinking, edited by Kerry S. Walters. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994. xviii, 265 pp. (SUNY series, Teacher Empowerment and School Reform)

Table of Contents:
Introduction : beyond logicism in critical thinking / Kerry S. Walters
Teaching two kinds of thinking by teaching writing / Peter Elbow
On critical thinking and connected knowing / Blythe McVicker Clinchy
Educating for empathy, reason, and imagination / Delores Gallo
Critical thinking, rationality, and the vulcanization of students / Kerry S. Walters
Toward a gender-sensitive ideal of critical thinking : a feminist poetic / Anne M. Phelan and James W. Garrison
Critical thinking and the "trivial pursuit" theory of knowledge / John E. McPeck
Why two heads are better than one : philosophical and pedagogical implications of a social view of critical thinking / Connie Missimer
Community and neutrality in critical thought : a nonobjective view on the conduct and teaching of critical thinking / Karl Hostetler
Critical thinking and feminism / Karen J. Warren
Teaching critical thinking in the strong sense : a focus on self-deception, world views, and a dialectical mode of analysis / Richard W. Paul
Toward a pedagogy of critical thinking / Henry A. Giroux
Teaching intellectual autonomy : the failure of the critical thinking movement / Laura Duhan Kaplan
Critical thinking beyond reasoning : restoring virtue to thought / Thomas H. Warren
Is critical thinking a technique, or a means of enlightenment? / Lenore Langsdorf.

This annotation is compiled from comments written on 28 Jan. 2005, 4 Feb. 2005, and 29 Aug. 2006:

The premise of this book is to challenge prevalent assumptions of the 'critical thinking' literature, i.e. that limiting critical thinking to an expose of logical fallacies and to concentrate exclusively on the formal aspects of rational thinking just won't do the job. All this is true, and several of the essays provide more comprehensive models of reasoning, all except the feminist essays (and the postmodernist ones—usually the same), all of which are garbage. We can find similar things going in feminist philosophy of science, similarly trashy.

I have a strong aversion to the use of feelgood language as a tool of manipulation, which this book seems to represent: keywords like "empathy", "gender", "feminism", "community", "nonobjective", "sensitive," "empowerment" are red flags. What is most alarming and depressing here, if my hunch proves to be correct, is a move not beyond formalism, but beneath it, i.e. towards an illiberal irrationalism in the guise of emancipation. This is just the worst of the mentality that came out of the self-indulgent childishness of the '60s, which at least was sufficiently undertheorized at the time not to yield the monstrous intellectual constructs whose institutionalization began in the '70s and exploded into pop culture in the '80s. It is truly mind-boggling and distressing how this poison has insinuated itself into the commonsense of liberal and radical intellectuals. Some of them seem to be amnesiac about their own history. (Once again my trademark slogan for explaining our current state: “It's the '70s, stupid!”)

The move beyond formalism seems to be a pretext to retool critical thinking in an irrationalist format exploiting the obscurantist comfort language of communitarianism and feminism. What could serve as a more fitting example of the counteracting of the expansion of social vocabulary by philosophical contraction?

As a counterweight, consult the essays of Karl Maton, who has analyzed the logic of knower vs. knowledge modes of legitimation, characterizing the new knower mode as the inverted correlate of the divine right of kings. I'll add that the proliferation of identities coincides, curiously, with the eclipse of the individual.

References:

“Popes, Kings & Cultural Studies: Placing the commitment to non-disciplinarity in historical context” by Karl Maton

“Historical Amnesia” by Karl Maton & Rob Moore

Lenin on atheism, materialism & popular education (2)

I had not intended to delve into this subject, but now that I have started it, I must add another key article by V.I. Lenin: "On the Significance of Militant Materialism" (12 March 1922), in Lenin’s Collected Works (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1972), Volume 33, 1972, pp. 227-236. First published in Pod Znamenem Marksizma, No. 3, March 1922. (Text also available on From Marx to Mao site.)

In this article Lenin dwells on the need for atheist literature, inter alia recommending the lively writings of the 18th century Enlightenment for purposes of popularization. While this literature is outdated in certain respects, it can easily be updated and supplemented and still compares favorably with less exemplary contemporary writings, whether they be dull, content-poor specimens of atheist literature or the deceptions of liberal wafflers pushing their own brand of religiosity or purporting to avoid "extreme positions". It is also vital to combat the misuse of new scientific theories (Einstein's relativity at the time of writing) for new forms of mystical-idealist obscurantism. Lenin also proposes an alliance of scientists and (dialectical) materialist philosophers to address the need for philosophical clarification of innovations in scientific knowledge, ideally a sort of “Society of Materialist Friends of Hegelian Dialectics”.