Method
Critique
Overview
Critique is a method of disciplined, systematic study of a written or oral discourse. Although critique is frequently understood as fault finding and negative judgment, it can also involve merit recognition, and in the philosophical tradition it also means a methodical practice of doubt. The contemporary sense of critique has been largely influenced by the Enlightenment critique of prejudice and authority, which championed the emancipation and autonomy from religious and political authorities.
The term critique derives, via French, from the Greek word κριτική (kritikē), meaning "the faculty of judging", that is, discerning the value of persons or things. Critique is also known as major logic, as opposed to minor logic or dialectics.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
In the original texts
Passages from public-domain books where Critique is discussed.
Such a critique is consequently, as far as possible, a preparation for an organon; and if this new organon should be found to fail, at least for a canon of pure reason, according to which the complete system of the philosophy of pure reason, whether it extend or limit the bounds of that reason, might one day be set forth both analytically and synthetically. For that this is possible, nay, that such a system is not…
Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Pure Reason
names the idea; states what it is; the book is about it; author linked in the graph; opens on it
Although, then, Philosophy can be divided only into two main parts, the theoretical and the practical, and although all that we may be able to say of the special principles of Judgement must be counted as belonging in it to the theoretical part, _i.e._ to rational cognition in accordance with natural concepts; yet the Critique of pure Reason, which must decide all this, as regards the possibility of the system…
Immanuel Kant, Kant's Critique of Judgement
states what it is; the book is about it; names the idea; author linked in the graph; opens on it
In the common logic, the doctrine of syllogism is supposed to conclude the first part, or what is called the 'elementary' theory. It is followed by the second part, the doctrine of Method, which proposes to show how a body of scientific knowledge is created by applying to existing objects the forms of thought discussed in the elementary part.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, The Logic of Hegel
states what it is; author linked in the graph
In contemporary discussion of value-judgments, however, appreciation is a peculiarly treacherous term. It is first asserted (or assumed) that all experiences of good are modes of knowing: that good is a term of a proposition. Then when experience forces home the immense difference between evaluation as a critical process (a process of inquiry for the determination of a good precisely similar to that which is…
John Dewey, Essays in Experimental Logic
states what it is
There is probably another sense, however, in which psychology comes into close relation with ethics. If we look on man as a microcosm, his inner system will more or less reproduce the system of the larger world. The older psychology used to distinguish an upper or superior order of faculties from a lower or inferior. Thus in the intellectual sphere, the intellect, judgment, and reason were set above the senses…
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Hegel's Philosophy of Mind
author linked in the graph
Philosophers who discussed Critique
Related ideas
- Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
- Philosophy
- Art criticism
- Immanuel Kant
- Jürgen Habermas
- Karl Marx
- Doctrine
- Bell hooks
- Validity (logic)
- Frankfurt School
- Gianni Vattimo
- Racism
- Theory
- Age of Enlightenment
- Writing
- Critique of Pure Reason
- Cultural studies
- Critical theory
- A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy
- Dogma
- Discourse
- Logic
- Michel Foucault
- Literary criticism
Place in the tradition
Part of Deconstruction.