To See Truly: Love and the Essence of Thinking

 

"Love is the extremely difficult realization that something other than oneself is real."

— Iris Murdoch

 

Here are some passages from literature that I believe reveal the essence of thinking.

 

     Dostoevsky’s amazing character Father Zosima (a monk and a saintly character) from The Brothers Karamazov embodies the standard as he reflects on guilt, parenting, and seeing others in truth:

 

“I ask myself more and more, what did I want from them? From the children I taught, from the monks I counseled? To be like me? To believe what I believe? And now, when I look into their eyes, I wonder if I ever saw them, really. If I loved them as they are, not as I wished them to be.”

“I remember a father who once came to me. He wept for his son, who was wild, and drank, and shamed him. ‘What have I done to deserve this?’ he asked. And I asked him in return: ‘Have you ever looked at him without judgment, even once? Have you ever seen him not as your failure, or your grief, but as a man in pain, a child still learning to walk upright before the Lord?’ And he said nothing. And I wept for him, for I too have done this.”

“We are always ready to love those who reflect our own ideals. But true love is harsh and holy – it demands that we see the other as they are, not as we would have them be. If you cannot do this for your brother, you cannot do it for God.”

 

 

     Another passage from another of my favorite novels, The Bell (1958) by Iris Murdoch. Michael Meade, a lay leader at a religious community, has complex relationships with several younger people. His reflection on Nick, who has fallen into despair and self-destruction, is one of the rare places where a character struggles to see another without ego or defense:

 

“He had seen Nick so much as someone to be rescued, to be drawn toward the light, that he had not seen him at all. Not really. He had seen a soul in distress, but not a person. He had loved, but in a way that made the other into a cause, or a trial — and not simply someone to be borne with, as he was.”

“Now he wondered: did Nick want saving? Did he even believe he could be saved? And was it my place – ever – to make him like me, or to want what I wanted for him?”

 

Murdoch’s gift is in showing how love can be contaminated by control, even when it's well-meaning, and how real love requires attention, humility, and release. And how it distorts thinking, distorts reality.

 

 

      In Marilyn Robinson’s Jack (2020), the fourth novel in the Gilead series, focuses entirely on Reverend Jack Boughton, the “lost” son. While earlier books showed the father struggling, this novel gives you Jack’s own inner life, and his longing to be known. But Reverend Boughton himself, late in life, tries to understand:

 

“He had imagined Jack coming home penitent, cleaned up, docile — a miracle of grace. And then he saw him: tired, kind, a man who carried his shame like a coat he could not take off. He realized he’d never asked what his son feared, what he loved, what he needed.”

“Jack did not want forgiveness – he wanted to be seen. And that was harder. Boughton had to lay aside his theology, his pride, his grief. Just to see the man.”

 

This is a slow, heartbreaking process. The entire novel is almost a meditation on the impossibility and necessity of being known.

 

 

      One more example from another writer very important to me, Wendell Berry, from his novel Jayber Crow (2000). Jayber, a barber and quasi-monk of a small Kentucky town, is not a father, but he watches people with the eyes of someone who is learning to love without possessiveness. His quiet observations of fathers and children – and his own unrequited love for a woman married to someone else – are moving.

 

“What I began to understand is that love is not wanting to make someone yours. It’s wanting to let them be. Let them be good, let them be in pain, even. Let them be themselves. That’s the hard part.”

 

Berry is interested in how love matures from desire and control into recognition and service.

  

What do all these passages – that are about the failing of love – have to do with thinking well? (Bear with me for starting with father-son as a central paradigm – it is what I am closest to, and that is not a bad principle for starting a reflection. You would start with what you are closest to.)

 

     We often associate thinking with logic, critical analysis, problem-solving. But I think these are surface ripples of thought, refinements – not its essence. The deeper question is: What is it to think at all? Or more precisely: What is it to begin to think truly about someone or something?

 

 

Thesis I: The Father Who Begins to See 

     In The Brothers Karamazov, Father Zosima sees the beginning of thinking happen when someone – probably through suffering – no longer sees the other (the subject of thought) in relation to themselves, their wishes, desires, fantasies, preconceptions, but as someone or something independent of the thinker.

 

 

Thesis 2: The First Act of the Mind 

     In classical logic, the first act of the mind is simple apprehension – understanding what something is. But what does it take to see someone – or anything – as it is? It requires attention (Simone Weil). It requires humility (to set aside our preconceptions). It requires openness (to be teachable by what appears). And these are not just cognitive virtues. They are moral and spiritual postures. In all the passages above examples a father or father-like character projects onto his son what he wants, fears, or expects. It is only when these projections break on reality – sometimes through suffering – that he begins to see. (Reality is that which resists our projections.) This breaking of our preconceptions against reality is the real beginning of thought.

 

 

Thesis 3: Thinking as a form of love

       Critical thinking is not merely spotting fallacies or organizing arguments. These are important. But the root of critical thinking lies in a deeper courage: The courage to face reality as it is – not as I wish it to be. The real obstacles to clear thought are often not intellectual but moral: pride, fear, self-deception, the desire to control. And therefore, as strange as it may sound: Love is a condition of clear thinking; clear thinking can be a form of love. Because love, rightly understood, is not indulgence or sentiment; it is the will to let the other be, to give space, to serve what is real. 

    I need to qualify this claim. Love does not mean affirming all things equally or accepting all things without judgment. There are realities such as cruelty, exploitation, or pornographic art that do not call for our embrace, but for our clarity. To "let something be" does not mean to approve of it. It means to see it as it is.  In the case of what is harmful, to see clearly why it is harmful, how it distorts the good, and how it appeals to us falsely. Love still plays a role as a desire to see truthfully and respond justly. To think well about something destructive requires neither hatred nor naive acceptance, but moral clarity rooted in love for what is truly good.

     And love must be distinguished from its counterfeit forms. Sentimentality is perhaps the main counterfeit. Anthony Savile defines sentimentality as involving two key elements:

1.              Idealizing or falsifying the object, and 
2.               Doing so in order to generate a self-gratifying feeling.

 Sentimentality, then, is a failure of thinking. It clouds perception by overlaying the object with illusions that comfort the self. It is a form of self-centeredness masquerading as concern.

    [A clear example of sentimentality might be found in the film Titanic, particularly in the romanticized portrayal of Jack and Rose's love affair. The narrative frames their brief relationship as life-changing while avoiding many of the real complexities such a bond would entail. The social and historical backdrop of the sinking is emotionally leveraged to intensify the romance but in ways that often prioritize spectacle and emotional catharsis over psychological realism. Jack is portrayed with a near-mythic simplicity – selfless, fearless, endlessly affirming – while Rose's liberation from a villainous, suffocating mother and class wholly depends on Jack as an idealized antithesis of both. The viewer is encouraged to feel deeply, tapping into their own romantic fantasies, identifying with one character or the other. But these feelings are generated by a highly curated and idealized version of reality. Perhaps there is nothing dangerous about this, perhaps it is a form of harmless daydreaming. But it is not a form of thinking or love in the sense meant here.]

       The love that clears the way for thinking is a discipline of realism. It does not falsify; it purifies. It strips away the projections and faces the beloved or the object in the light of what it is. It is not self-indulgent but self-effacing. It bears the pain of seeing truly and still remains faithful. The realism of love is thus the antithesis of sentimentality. Love desires truth, even when the truth is difficult or not self-serving. Sentimentality avoids truth, for the sake of ease or emotional reward.

 

 Thesis 4: The Child as a Symbol of Any Being 

   Why a child – besides the fact that I have three of them. Because a child is both one of the most loved figures, and one of the most projected upon. But “the son” in these stories stands for any being – even Being itself. The question of good thinking, then, is also the question of metaphysics and theology: Can I see this tree, this face, this pain, this person – as they are? Can I let them be? To think well is to ask, as Aquinas would: “What is this?” [or “Who is this?”] But in such a way that the answer is not dominated by me.

 

 Thesis 5: A Literary Example –  Loving a Place 

    Take another example, from Wendell Berry's Hannah Coulter. The narrator, Hannah, reflects on the farm and land she and her husband cared for through decades of hardship. Over time, she realizes that many people, even her own children, only see the land as potential, as future, as profit or burden. But for her, the land is not a means. It is a presence.

 

"This place has shaped me. I have shaped it. I came to it thinking it was my inheritance. I have come to see it as a gift. To love it rightly is not to wish it were something else. It is to know it, to work with it, to let it be what it is." 

This too is thinking: not calculating, but dwelling with, abiding, learning the grain of the world. The same dynamic: projection must give way to presence. Love becomes the condition for knowledge.

 

 Thesis 6: The Method of Truth

    

"Der Sinn einer Frage ist die Methode ihrer Beantwortung."— Ludwig Wittgenstein("The meaning of a question is the method of its answer.")

 

What does it mean to ask a real question? 

    When a father asks, “Who is my son?”, he may think he's asking something simple. But the method of answering determines the depth of the question. If he answers with memory, expectation, fear, or pride – then he's not really asking at all. He's reinforcing an illusion. If he attends without trying to control, if he suffers or rejoices with his child, if he really listens . . . then the question becomes real. 

     Wittgenstein implies that we do not just speak questions; we enact them. And the way we ask determines what can be seen. To ask “What is this being before me?” – a child, a stranger, a place, a work of art or craft – requires a method: one of careful attention, truthfulness as a spiritual demeanor.  This, I think, is the method of love exemplified in the passages above, an attending to the independent presence of the other. And therefore, love is not the enemy of clear thought, but its very form. Not a distortion of truth at its deepest level, but its most faithful way of approach. 

 

Thesis 7: On Realism and Hope 

    There is a deep tension in the life of the mind, reflected in two apparently contradictory statements, both of which seem true to me:

 

“The courage to face reality as it is — not as I wish it to be.”

“Madness is seeing the world as it is and not as it should be.” — Man of La Mancha

One speaks for realism, the other for a vision beyond it. I think that ‘thinking well’ requires this tension.

 First: good thinking is to see things as they are in all their particularity and brokenness. This is the foundational. But realism is not cynicism. To see clearly does not mean to accept passively. You start from what is real so that what ought to be can arise in response to it.

 Second: I can only see what anything or anybody is from a perspective of what they ought to be. That can and usually does involve projection. But it can also be informed by love – willing the good of the other, even if that means just letting it be (as in the Jayber Crow passage). It need not be informed by fantasy. Therefore, hope must not be understood as a projection onto the world but as a response to the world – a longing that what is should flourish precisely as that which it is. Realism is not the negative pole to hope's positivity. It is the grounding of all genuine hope, and hope is the fruit of realism when it is married to love.

     In all my examples a father or father-figure projects onto his son what he wants, fears, or expects. This often includes a desire that the son become 'a good man' or 'a successful man,' but the danger is that such ideals, however noble in language, may still be rooted in the father's own image of goodness or success. This is subtly but importantly different from desiring that the son become what he truly ought to be. The first is a projection shaped by personal aspiration, pride, or fear of failure. The second is a response to the reality of the child himself: his nature, his particularity, his needs, his vocation. It is grounded not in the father's will, but in attentiveness to what is already there, waiting to be known and loved.

  

Tentative Conclusion

      The essence of thinking is not the control of an object. It is the welcoming of what is not-me, the letting-be of being. In this, philosophy, theology, and literature converge. Zosima names it with tears. Murdoch describes it as vision washed clean of ego. Robinson depicts it as a slow awakening, through fatherly sorrow. Berry shows it through long companionship with a place. Wittgenstein frames it in the very structure of questioning. Cervantes gives us the ache of the world as it ought to be.

    

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What Is Truth? A Meditation

What does it mean to say something is true?

     For many students, the word “truth” feels heavy and uncertain. Some associate it only with science: true means proven, measurable, observable. Others take a more skeptical view: maybe truth is just relative, shaped by your background, your beliefs, your story. Some might even wonder whether truth exists at all. I heard to a Trump supporter when their spin on the attack on the Capital was fact-checked: “Well, we have our truth.” If reality is socially constructed, as Trump proves, it can also be individually constructed and we can all have our own truth, live in our own universe, one of our own making. It is not only Trump supporters who are thus skeptical.

     When people stop believing in truth, when truth is seen only as a matter of perspective or power, epistemological bubbles and echo chambers thrive. If there is no truth to seek, only narratives to assert, then we lose the very basis for meaningful disagreement or shared understanding. Dialogue becomes impossible because no one expects to be wrong or changed by the other. Instead of thinking together, we retreat into camps, each reinforcing its own worldview. Paradoxically, this happens not because we believe too strongly in truth, but because we no longer believe in it at all. Skepticism about truth doesn’t set us free; it isolates us, and makes us more vulnerable to manipulation by those who shape what we see and hear. Reclaiming truth – not as a possession, but as a horizon we approach – is one way of resisting this fragmentation and restoring the conditions for real communication.

 

. . .

 

    So I want to start simple. At its core, truth has to do with thought being informed by and adequate to reality. A sentence like “the cat is on the mat” is true if the cat really is on the mat. This traditional view – known as the correspondence theory of truth – is useful and important. It gives us clarity in science, logic, law, and everyday life.

    But human life is more than cats on mats. How do we talk about the truth of a poem? The truth of an act of kindness? The truth that a friend sees in us that we ourselves have forgotten? Truth in morals? These don’t fit easily into a model of scientific proof. Yet we would be impoverished if we had no way to speak of them as true.

     Here we need a deeper understanding, one that I learned from Heidegger’s idea of truth as uncovering, disclosure, unconcealment. The thought is that truth is not just about accurate statements; it is about disclosure, or letting something show itself. This means that truth is not only what we say about reality, but what happens when something real steps out of concealment into light. This doesn’t replace the older idea of truth as the thought being adequate to reality but it explains how such a fit is even possible. Our thoughts can correspond to reality only because reality has revealed itself to us in some way.

      Think of it like this: A law of nature is true not because we invented it, but because the world disclosed it, and our thought was adequate to it. A proverb like “Pride comes before a fall” is true because it rings with a deep and tested insight into human behavior, not because it was proven in a lab. A person who knows you deeply and tells you an uncomfortable truth about yourself may be offering something just as real than any scientific fact.

    This is where Hans-Georg Gadamer, a student of Heidegger, brings in the importance of the use of true as in a true friend. A true friend doesn’t flatter. A true friend doesn’t manipulate. A true friend helps you see who you are – even when that truth is painful. In this way, the idea of a true friend becomes a metaphor for truth itself: faithfulness to reality, even when it is difficult. This also explains why truth takes so many forms: Science seeks truths about repeatable, measurable patterns in nature; law tries to establish truth about what happened and who is responsible; literature uncovers truths about what it is like to be human; everyday life demands truth when we say, “Be honest with me,” or “Tell me the truth.” In all these cases, we are not just asking for facts. We are asking to see more clearly, to understand something real, to be less self-deceived.

    To seek truth is therefore not only an intellectual task, but a moral one. It requires attention. As Simone Weil and Iris Murdoch argued, attention is a kind of love – a readiness to let something or someone be seen as they are, not as we want them to be. Without this attentiveness, truth slips through our fingers. Think of the father trying to relive his life vicariously through his son. There is the reality of his son and there is his blindness to that reality that stems from his own subjective damage. There is no ‘the son’s truth’ and ‘the father’s truth’ except in an ironic sense. This example shows that truth is essential for living a halfway decent life.

     This is why we should be wary of closing off the meaning of reality too soon by reducing it to what appears within science or sociology. If we stipulate in advance that only what can be measured is real, we have already excluded most of what gives life its depth: justice, beauty, sorrow, joy, love. And if we say truth is just “what I feel,” we give up the possibility of being challenged by reality. In both cases, we stop thinking.

    But when we remain attentive – when we listen, wait, consider, and reflect – then truth can happen. It may come as clarity, as insight, as recognition, as wonder. It may come slowly. But when it comes, it changes us. Truth, in the deepest sense, is what calls us out of illusion or fantasy and into contact with what is real. It may come through a formula, a story, a silence, a conversation, or a friend. It may be about a law of motion or a lesson in love. But in every case, it matters because it shows us something we did not see before.

    To be true, then, is not just to be correct. It is to be faithful to reality.

 

. . .

 

Some students fear that any talk of truth opens the door to absolutism: to dogmatism, intolerance, or the silencing of different perspectives. That is a real danger when people claim final possession of the truth and refuse to listen or learn. But acknowledging truth is not the same as pretending to have the whole truth. In fact, the very reason we seek truth is because we recognize that reality is large and we are small. The world is richer, deeper, and more complex than any one person or perspective can grasp. Truth-seeking actually requires humility. It means recognizing that we are finite and fallible, that we can be wrong, and that only by listening, questioning, and learning can we hope to grow in understanding. The moment we stop thinking truth matters, we also stop taking our own fallibility seriously. But the antidote to absolutism is not to deny truth – a kind of absolutism in reverse; it is to seek it with care, patience, and openness.

 

 

What is Thinking? A Brief Meditation

 

    I always stress the importance not only of thinking critically but thinking well. But what does that mean? What is thinking? I can’t really answer that question satisfactorily but here are some reflections that might be a good starting point.

     I would start with an idea important to two rather good thinkers, Simone Weil and Iris Murdoch: the idea of thinking as attention (from the French attendre, and attention), or attending to something or someone is a focused, selfless, generous way. Not just calculating or solving problems but something deeper. Real thinking begins when we attend to the world as it is, rather than imposing our own categories, wishes, or fears onto it. For Simone Weil, attention is a kind of deep, focused waiting. It’s not about trying to solve a problem or quickly figure something out. Instead, it’s a patient openness to whatever is there: to another person, to a question, to the truth. Attention means not forcing your own ideas onto something, but letting it speak. It is a form of love: to pay attention is to care enough to truly see. Iris Murdoch builds on this idea. For her, attention is the opposite of selfishness. Most of the time, we are wrapped up in ourselves, in our desires, plans, fears, fantasies. But when we pay real attention, we look away from ourselves and toward something real: a person, a work of art, even an idea. Like Weil, Murdoch sees attention as the beginning of moral life. To see clearly, to understand others, to act justly to what you are thinking about – all begin with attention. To think well means to let things show themselves, to receive what is given before acting on it.

     To think, in this deeper sense, is to let what is present reveal itself rather than to impose our categories, desires, or plans onto it. A clear example of non-thinking can be seen in the case of a father who projects his own unrealized dreams onto his son. He sees not his child but an image of what he himself might have been. The child’s real interests, gifts, and needs are overlooked because the father is not attending; he is constructing. He is not letting the boy show who he is but instead reshaping him into an extension of himself. This is not attention but domination, and it reveals how easily love or care can become distorted when we do not let the other speak in their own voice. True thinking means allowing the other – whether a person, a work of art, an idea, or a situation – to appear on its own terms.

      Or this: Imagine your friend is grieving. They’ve lost someone they love. You sit with them, not to explain, not to fix, but just to listen. You don’t say, “I know exactly how you feel,” or try to make their pain disappear. Instead, you attend. This is thinking—not about what to do next, but about what this moment is. And through this attention, something real is revealed: not just emotion, but truth about loss, love, even being human.

      Or you’re reading a novel, and a character reminds you of someone in your life. Their struggle is not yours, but it’s close. You pause. You try not to judge too quickly. Instead of using the character to prove a point or defend your view, you wait. You let them become who they are. You attend to the world the author has created and allow it to expand your vision. This is not analysis. It is attention to meaning. It’s the opposite of using the story to confirm your own beliefs. It can reveal something true not just about the character, but about yourself and others.

    Or you’re listening to a piece of music. You’re not analyzing its structure. You’re letting it reach you. A certain phrase moves you. It holds something – a dignity, sorrow, hope. You attend. And in doing so, something is revealed not just about the music but about life, about what it means to be human, about what it is to be you. Projection would mean using the music as background or to fit a mood. Thinking means receiving what the music offers on its own terms.

     Or you’re teaching a student who is struggling. You could blame them or push harder. But you pause and listen to what they say and how they say it. You begin to understand not just what they’re missing but why. You adjust, not by a technique, but by attention. Teaching becomes the practice of seeing. Projection would mean treating every student the same; thinking means seeing the reality of this student now.

      Or you’ve wronged someone. Your remorse tells you that. You want to make it up to the extent you can. This requires attending to the nature of the wrong and the needs of the person you wronged relative to the harm. If a man has betrayed his wife, it might not be possible to restore the original relation of trust any time soon but he might resolve to be a true friend in whatever situation comes after as long as his wife is open to that. Over time he can do something to show a kind of fidelity and restore something of what was lost. This requires a kind of unsentimental thinking or attention to the reality of the situation his actions have brought about.

 

. . .

    When Heidegger said, "Science doesn’t think," he didn’t mean that scientists are thoughtless or unintelligent. He meant that science, by its very nature, is limited to a particular kind of rationality – instrumental or technical reason. Scientific rationality looks for causes, measures patterns, predicts outcomes, and tests hypotheses. It is incredibly powerful for certain purposes: medicine, engineering, physics, and so on. But it does not pause to ask what things mean, or what it means that things are at all. It does not attend to the particular. It is (rightly within science) not open to the being of things and indeed the world as a whole outside of the box of its method. It could not help the father think about his son or the husband who has betrayed his wife repair the damage or the reader of the novel remain open for its meaning. When Heidegger said, "Science doesn’t think," he meant science doesn’t attend to the being of things, to the things themselves. It explains how things work but not what they mean.  What does the being of this particular son require from his father. Science is powerful in that it makes possible a control over nature that was unimaginable in previous centuries but it cannot think in this deeper sense. It deals with facts and quantifiable regularities, not meanings. And meanings require attention.

       One essential dimension of thinking, especially in the tradition of Plato, is dialogue. Plato’s Socrates did not write treatises or deliver lectures – he asked questions. He conversed. He helped his interlocutors clarify their thoughts, uncover contradictions, and move toward deeper understanding. Thinking, for Socrates, was not a private act but a shared pursuit of truth. In genuine conversation, we are not merely defending opinions but seeking insight together. This means listening deeply, asking real questions, and remaining open to being changed. Such dialogue is not debate; it is cooperative exploration. It depends on the virtues we’ve already discussed: humility, honesty, courage, and the desire to understand rather than to win. When dialogue works, it becomes a form of attention: not just to what the other person is saying, but to what is coming to light between us. In this way, dialogue is both a practice of thinking and a way of honoring reality. Imagine the father talking to his wife or his own father about the needs of his son.

    I would go further. There is a kind of thinking that is also a kind of love. Not affection or liking, but the love that seeks to will the good of the other, as the classical Christian tradition puts it. This kind of love – caritas, or agape – is realistic. It doesn’t idealize or manipulate. It sees others as they are, in their truth, and asks: What is truly good for them? This love is not blind; it is attentive. It listens and waits. It resists the temptation to flatter or to please, just as it resists the temptation to dominate. Like the father who must learn to see his son truly – not as an extension of himself, but as another person –  so too must we think well about others. Real love is a form of attention. It is thinking with care. For those uncomfortable with the language of love, we might also speak of respect in the deepest sense, what Kant called treating others as ends in themselves, never merely as means. Whether we call it love or respect, the essential act is the same: to look upon another person (thing, world) with a readiness to understand and a refusal to use, project, construct.

    What I’ve been calling “attending” to reality was once called contemplation: a form of thinking that is receptive, rather than manipulative; loving, rather than dominating. In the classical tradition, contemplation is what allows us to see things in their truth, not because we control them, but because we let them be. To “see things in their truth” means to perceive them as they really are rather than as they serve our purposes, reflect our desires, or fit our categories. This was already shown in the example of the father and son: the father does not see the boy in his truth, because he projects onto him an image shaped by his own ambition. To contemplate his son would mean to see him as he truly is – his strengths, limitations, temperament, and longings – apart from what the father wants him to be. Contemplation is thus a kind of attention that is humble, patient, and open to being changed by what it sees. It lets the other speak. In this light, thinking and contemplation are not two separate acts, but two names for one essential human capacity: to allow the world, in all its richness, to speak to us. And this is the source from which all other forms of reasoning draw their meaning.

      If thinking is more than solving problems or calculating outcomes, then what is it for? What is its telos, its deepest purpose? The classical answer is: truth. But not just truth as correct information or getting the facts right. Rather, truth as disclosure: a letting-be of things so they can show what they are, at least from a certain perspective. In this light, the goal of thinking is not control but understanding. And real understanding is never just technical; it is personal. To think well is to be in relationship with reality: to attend to it, to be changed by it. At its deepest, thinking aims at wisdom, truth that is lived; and perhaps even communion, that is, being in right relation to the world, to others, and (for some of us) to what is greater than us.

 

. . .

 

    So how does critical thinking fit into this picture? Critical thinking is often taught as a set of neutral skills: spotting fallacies, questioning assumptions, analyzing arguments. These are helpful but on their own, they miss something essential. To understand what we must ask why we think critically in the first place.

      I think of critical thinking as a way of helping attention do its work. It helps us recognize where language obscures rather than reveals, where arguments manipulate rather than explain. This is especially important when we encounter narratives that reinforce unjust structures of power where aspects of reality are suppressed and certain truths are avoided. In these cases, critical thinking becomes a form of ethical discernment. I remember first realizing that some of the ways I thought and felt were programmed into me, as it were. I felt like a puppet dancing to other people’s strings. Still, critical thinking doesn’t aim to destroy authority as such. I remember learning a lesson from my grandfather about judging a person based on their character, not their skin color, that was so authoritative that further reflection only deepened it. I see no need to debunk that lesson. But when power disguises itself as truth, that needs uncovering. Thus the critical aspect of thinking helps us remain attentive to what is real and what is good, even when these are hard to see. It is most appropriate to the political realm.

      Dialogue is another form of this attentive thinking, one more at home at the university than critical thinking in the previous sense. In genuine conversation –not debate, not persuasion, but real dialogue – we are trying to make sense together. We are not just exchanging opinions. We are testing our views in the light of other people’s experiences and reasoning. We are, ideally, open to being changed. In dialogue, attention takes the form of listening not just to words but to what the other is reaching toward. Sometimes a thought is half-formed, hesitant, uncertain – and it is precisely there that something important begins to emerge. Attention in dialogue means staying with that uncertainty, not rushing to conclusions, and helping each other articulate what is not yet clear.

     This is why real thinking cannot be reduced to tools. The desire to make sense, and the willingness to be attentive, are deeper than any method. They involve the whole person. They are moral and intellectual at once. They are grounded in humility, patience, and care. Critical thinking and dialogue both belong to this larger movement: the attempt to see truly, to understand what is, and to live in accordance with it. That is why thinking begins with attention—and why attention leads us, in time, to truth. That is the sense in which Socrates believed that a thoughtless life could not be a good one – think of the father thoughtlessly imposing his vision on his son – and is unworthy of a human being.

. . .

    In traditional logic, thinking has often been divided into three acts: conceptualization, judgment, and reasoning. These are not wrong but when approached narrowly or mechanically, they can miss what we’ve been calling the deeper heart of thinking: attending to reality.

     The first act of the mind is forming concepts or ideas (synonyms): that is, grasping what a thing is. This isn’t just attaching a label or stipulating a definition. It means seeing into the nature of something: trying to understand a person, a phenomenon, an idea. When we do this well, we are not forcing things into preexisting boxes. We are attending to what is there. Think of a teacher trying to understand a student’s difficulty. She doesn’t categorize them according to standard clichés (“lazy,” “slow,” “unmotivated”) but looks closely at what is going on. What is this student like? What do they need? This is conceptualization as attention: we form truer ideas when we look closely and with care.

       The second act of the mind is judgment: putting concepts together to say something true or false. For example: This student is struggling. The Faure Requiem expresses a Christian view of death. This plane isn’t safe. Here again truth is not about correctness alone but about fidelity to what is. We make judgments all the time but they are good only to the extent that they are grounded in reality, and not projection. Judgment, in this deeper sense, is an act of truthfulness. It requires discernment: being careful with words, with what we say is or isn’t the case. To judge well is to allow something to be seen clearly – not just by us, but by others too.

       The third act of the mind is reasoning: classically understood as drawing inferences or seeing how propositions hang together. the activity of moving from premises to conclusions in a way that brings new truths into view. It’s the act of connecting judgments so that one can follow from another, revealing a deeper coherence in thought and reality. For example, suppose we accept two propositions:

 

1)   All just laws promote the common good.

 

2)   This new policy promotes only private corporate interests, not the common good.

 

From these two judgments, reasoning allows us to conclude:

 

    3) Therefore, this new policy is not a just law.

 

This is reasoning: not simply naming or judging but linking ideas to discover a conclusion that was not explicitly stated before. It sharpens our view of the world. It reveals an inconsistency or a truth we hadn’t noticed. This is an essential aspect of thinking. Without reasoning, we would have no way to organize thought beyond isolated facts or impressions. We would remain on the surface of things. But through reasoning, we trace implications, test coherence, and move closer to a fuller understanding of the truth.

 

 

 

     When the three acts of the mind – concept, judgment, and reasoning – are grounded in attention, they come alive. They stop being tools and become practices of humility, care, and truth-seeking. This returns us to the heart of thinking: not the manipulation of ideas, but the effort to understand what is, and to be faithful to it.

 Either an Introduction or a Section of my Coursebook on Critical Thinking

Supplement: Thinking About Reason and Meaning

Introduction: The Culture of Critical Thinking Today

At many universities today, the dominant view of reason and knowledge reflects a form of positivism: that is, a belief that only what can be scientifically tested, measured, or proven is truly real and thus can be known. If something cannot be verified in a lab or described in mathematical or physical terms, it is often dismissed as merely "subjective," meaning a product of individual psychology, social conditioning, or cultural bias. Science – rightly in its own sphere – imagines reality as a closed system: a world made up of brute facts, governed by natural laws, in which meaning, value, and inner experience are not part of reality but merely projections. In this view, reason is neutral and impersonal, and everything else – beauty, morality, love, and even consciousness – is seen as cut off from the world, needing to be explained from within the closed system of nature. We with our inner lives are like the prisoners in Plato’s cave, mistaking shadows for truth. Science is supposed to get us out of the Cave.

     The kind of rationality behind modern critical thinking is often modeled after scientific reason. Science, for all its power, operates within a closed system. A system is a set of rules, assumptions, and variables. A closed system is one that defines in advance what counts as evidence and what questions can be asked. In such a system, nothing “outside” can affect its logic. Science assumes that the universe is governed by physical laws and that all phenomena are ultimately measurable and observable.

     But the world of meaning is not a closed system in which everything can be quantified. To interpret a novel, to forgive a friend, to grieve a loss, to judge a policy, or to ponder one’s purpose – these are not activities governed by the closed logic of physics. They open outward. They are perspectival, meaning they are always shaped by the position of the person asking the question. And a perspective implies limitation. If we saw everything, we would not need a perspective. But because we are finite, we must interpret. And interpretation always implies the possibility of truth – not as correspondence with a detached, neutral reality, but as a deeper alignment with what shows itself from within experience.

   This means that meaning depends on reality being bigger than the closed system of science. It must be capable of showing itself in new ways to different people, at different times, under different conditions. And this openness is not chaotic; it’s what makes shared understanding, moral insight, and personal growth possible. To deny this openness is to treat all experience as an illusion, imagining that our deepest responses are shadows cast by a hidden, indifferent “real” world we can never touch.

    In such a climate, "critical thinking" is often reduced to a method for deconstructing claims without ever questioning the framework in which those methods make sense. It is seen as a set of tools that anyone can use. The tools have no philosophical attachments. They do not touch the “autonomous self” that uses them. This is a view I challenge.

 

Two Kinds of Reason

     When we talk about "critical thinking," many students assume we're talking about the kind of reasoning used in science or mathematics. That form of reason aims for objectivity: it wants to describe things as they are independent of personal feeling or network of beliefs. It's the kind of thinking used to determine the boiling point of water, the distance from Earth to the Moon, or the cause of a chemical reaction. In these cases, if we follow the methods carefully, anyone who repeats the experiment should get the same results.

But not all of life is like that.

   There are areas of our experience where this kind of neutrality isn't possible and can even be misleading. Think about love, grief, beauty, shame, hope, or remorse; think about how such responses to reality are part of politics, art, history, pedagogy, morals, and religion. These aren't just personal feelings though they are that too. They are also responses to something. Grief is a response to the death of a beloved person. Remorse is the pained recognition of having wronged a human being (or indeed an animal). Awe and reverence are responses to something wonderful – a heroic deed or a clear night sky. And in these cases, how we understand what we're experiencing depends on who we are, what kind of life we've lived, and what kind of world we believe we live in. Reason about such aspects of reality – disclosed within the realm of meaning –  is not about detaching from life. It's about going deeper into it. You can't stand outside of love and "test" it like you would a chemical. You can't run a physics experiment to determine the meaning of grief. And yet, these experiences matter. They reveal something about the world and about ourselves.

 

The Circle of Understanding

    When we try to make sense of these meaningful experiences, we begin with what we already know (or think we know), and then we allow new experiences to challenge or deepen that understanding. We don't come to them as blank slates. For example, if you've never experienced the death of someone close to you, your understanding of grief will be limited, maybe even theoretical. But when you lose someone, your understanding isn't just increased; it's transformed. The experience itself changes what the word "grief" means to you. You have learned. Your understanding of the world – not just your psychology – has expanded.

    This is how our understanding works in much of life: we begin somewhere, are challenged, and grow. Our responses are shaped by our past, but they can also surprise us, change us. We see more – a not less – when we bring our full selves to the experience, which is there anyway whether we are aware of it or not. This isn't a flaw in our reasoning. It's a sign that we're reasoning in a domain where life itself is the evidence.

    This same process applies when we interpret works of art, literature, or even history. When you read a novel, your understanding of its characters, themes, and message depends not only on the words on the page but also on your own background, imagination, and life experience. Two people can read the same story and come away with very different, yet still valid, though limited interpretations. The novel is like reality: it exceeds any particular reading of it – which doesn’t mean that some readings don’t reveal deep aspects of the novel, others not. Our readings reflect our strengths and limits. But we can go on deepening our readings over the course of a lifetime – or over generations. This is what I mean when I say the very idea of a “perspective” and “the realm of meaning” implies a conception of reality that transcends our limited ability to uncover it. It is like Humboldt said of the translations of a work: the meaning is all the possible (good) translations and readings of it. That is what meaning reveals reality to be like, unless we want to call meaning an illusion and reduce it to some category within a closed system that is pure non-meaning (power, evolution, class conflict, patriarchy, etc. – all of which are indeed part of reality).

     The same goes for history. Historical interpretation involves facts, of course—but which facts are emphasized, how they are connected, and what they are said to mean will vary depending on the interpreter's perspective. This doesn't mean that anything goes, or that all interpretations are equally good. It means that understanding in these areas is always a dialogue between the evidence and the person engaging with it.

 

Emotions, the Inner Life (“subjectivity”) and the Discovery of the World

    In science, emotion or mood is considered something "extra."

• It might motivate a scientist to pursue a certain line of research.
• It might get in the way and introduce bias.
• But it doesn't tell you whether your results are accurate.

But in the realm of meaning – in love, art, or moral life – emotion is part of the discovery itself. Emotions can be “cognitive.” They can be (like thoughts) more or less in tune or out of tune with reality itself (not obviously reality as science imagines it for methodological reasons, as closed system, but as we experience it whether we want to or not).

• Grief can reveal the value of a lost life.
• Remorse can show you the reality of a wrong.
• Awe can reveal something sublime or sacred.

These aren't just moods we happen to feel; they are responses to something real. And in these cases, emotion doesn't cloud reason; it is reason, working at a different depth. (Unless we choose to see, or have been conditioned to see, all emotions as subjective and cut off from reality because reality is imagined as a closed system that excludes meaning.)

Examples

• The freezing point of water is 0°C. You can test this in a lab. It doesn’t matter who you are.
• Your friend dies. You feel grief. It teaches you something about love, loss, and the value of a human life. That insight could never be obtained by watching an experiment.
• A character in a novel commits a terrible betrayal. You feel a mixture of anger and sorrow. This emotional response is not a distraction; it's what tells you that a wrong has occurred.
• You hear a piece of music that moves you to tears. Another person hears the same piece and feels nothing. That doesn't make your experience invalid; at worst your experience is sentiment, in which case it truly is “subjective.” But it may show that have the background the other lacks – not only to understand the musical idiom but the sufferings to understand what it is communicating.
• A historian interprets the fall of the Roman Empire as a result of moral decay. Another sees it as a failure of military infrastructure. Both rely on evidence, but their interpretations are shaped by the frameworks they bring to the material. Understanding history requires more than facts; it requires perspective, understandings about what history really is.

 

    The key is not to eliminate yourself from the process (as neutral reason tries to do) but to become more aware of how your perspective shapes your understanding and to allow that understanding to grow through deeper engagement. To lay your preconceptions out on the table, so to speak. Your preconceptions are analogous to scientific theories which the “data” of life experience tests. Of course, to be willing to do this requires some courage, some humility, and loving truth more than being right. We can call this set of virtues being objective.

 

Certainties

    Some of the convictions that shape our perspective – such as the belief that other people matter, or that truth (learning) is worth seeking – function as starting points in our thinking. You might call them axioms or deep certainties. They are not proven in the same way scientific hypotheses are because they must be assumed to “prove” – to make sense of anything else at all in the realm of meaning.  But even these deep convictions are tested in life. For example, the belief that love is more than a chemical reaction may not be proven in a lab, but it is tested in experience through fidelity, suffering, sacrifice, and joy. These convictions can be confirmed, challenged, or even transformed over time. The test is not just logical but existential: how well do they illuminate reality, hold up under pressure, or help us live truthfully?

   This calls for a key distinction: a perspective is not the same as subjectivism or relativism. A perspective is by definition limited. A limited perspective implies a whole of reality that is beyond our limited perspective. We cannot apprehend the whole of reality (being mortal and not divine) so we project our limited perspective onto the whole of reality. This, in turn, conditions our concrete experience. But a perspective (of the whole or a particular part) can be tested. It can be deepened or corrected by experience. It aims at truth. Some things we cannot doubt – e.g. other people matter – but not because such things cannot be logically or scientifically doubted. That means we must acknowledge that all understanding in the realm of meaning has an existential dimension. The existential dimension refers to how we understand meaning depends on who we are, how we live, and what we care about. It’s not something you can fully grasp from the outside or by looking at data. (The most ‘intelligent’ android would be like a dog watching TV when it comes to understanding, say, history – your biography, for example.) You have to live it, feel it, and respond to it as a person. So, unlike logical or scientific knowledge, which is meant to be objective and the same for everyone regardless of their situation, existential understanding is personal, situated, and tied to our experience of being human. And yet it is not “subjective” in the sense of being arbitrary or purely individual. It still aims at truth, but a truth that can only be seen from within life.

   But skepticism about meaning (e.g. radical subjectivism, relativism) claims – absolutely! – that there is, as a matter of fact, no truth, only opinion, different tastes about which we cannot reason. To reduce the realm of meaning to a matter of taste – whether the taste of an individual or a group – is an absolute claim about reality as a whole (a closed system). It refutes itself by excluding itself from its knowledge-claim about reality as a whole: ‘All claims about meaning are subjective tastes – except mine.’ Any radical skepticism about the realm of meaning necessarily contradicts itself (unless, I suppose, it acknowledges that it has an existential dimension, that it is a perspective).

 

Intellectual Virtue

   In the realm of meaning, as in science, understanding depends not just on intelligence but on certain virtues: honesty, humility, openness, attentiveness, the courage to change, loving truth more than being right. In fact, the kind of learning that matters most often depends on moral and intellectual virtues. These include patience – to listen before responding, to sit with complexity before jumping to conclusions; intellectual honesty – to acknowledge what we do not know or where we may have been mistaken; courage – to allow our preconceptions to be challenged by truth or experience; and love of truth over being right – to care more about discovering what is real than defending our ego. At the root of these is humility, the recognition that our perspective is always limited and that genuine learning requires openness to what transcends us. [Obviously, pathological narcissists like Trump and people like most of his followers whose “identity” depends on maintaining “their truth” in the face of all and any evidence that challenges it will not be good thinkers or learners. We all might be in a larger or smaller bubble, epistemologically speaking, but we don’t have to remain in an echo chamber that discredits everything outside of the bubble.]

     How do you acquire these virtues? By practicing them. You become honest by repeatedly telling the truth, even when it is hard. Etc. This is of the utmost importance if you want to be a good thinker.

    These virtues do not guarantee that we will always be right, but without them, we are unlikely to grow in understanding at all. Scientific understanding can sometimes proceed without some (not all!) of these virtues but genuine human understanding cannot. No scientist worth their salt can be as a scientist dishonest, inattentive, closed-minded, etc. But outside the lab, I suppose, they can be all of this and still be a good scientist. Not so in the realm of meaning. What we see depends, in large part, on who we are.

 

Reductionism

   This also means that we must beware of reductionism: that is, the temptation to explain everything about a person or their views by reducing them to a single cause: class interest, unconscious bias, will-to-power, social privilege, or ideology. These frameworks are important for self-examination. They can help us become aware of influences we hadn’t noticed in ourselves. But when they are used only to discredit others without listening or engaging in good faith, they become obstacles to understanding. Good thinking means resisting the urge to close our minds with reductionist shortcuts. Instead, we should give others the benefit of the doubt, avoid fallacies like ad hominem attacks or appeals to group identity (ad populum), and focus on whether their reasoning is honest, careful, and justified. True understanding includes the humility to reflect on our own assumptions – not just the tools to critique others.

 

Dialogue and the Fruitfulness of Disagreement

    Genuine dialogue about moral or political differences can be one of the richest forms of learning. It requires more than argument; it requires curiosity, patience, and a willingness to understand what matters most to someone else. A disagreement about values is not like a math problem to be solved; it is a conversation between two different ways of making sense of the world.

     When two people hold conflicting convictions – e.g. about justice, freedom, equality, or tradition – they often bring with them different life experiences, cultural backgrounds, and emotional histories. Rather than seeing such differences as threats, we must learn to see them as opportunities. Listening deeply to another person's moral or political perspective can expand our own horizon, challenge our blind spots, or even reinforce our position with greater depth and nuance. At the very least, it teaches us how others live, think, and hope.

    The goal of such conversations is not always agreement, but mutual understanding. And understanding is itself a form of growth. But we should go beyond mutual understanding. Some exceptionally valuable conversations do more than open us to other views. They lead to a clearer vision of reality. In listening and reflecting honestly, we may come to see not just why someone believes what they do, but what in the world their belief is a response to. Sometimes, these conversations reveal that one view illuminates the world more truthfully than another, that it captures something real about human dignity, freedom, suffering, or love. To say this is not to deny the value of multiple perspectives but to affirm that the world itself calls for a response, and some responses fit it better than others. [Compare the MAGA version is history and race in America to that of Martin Luther King.]

    We can learn to recognize this fit: through experience, through reflection, and through dialogue. Fruitful disagreement doesn't just sharpen our positions; it helps us see what is there, in the world, with more depth and clarity. Understanding another’s view doesn't always mean agreeing with it. We may understand it well and still judge it to be inadequate or false. But if that judgment is made in light of honest engagement and deep attention, then it too can be a way of honoring the truth.

 

The Matrix Fallacy

      Some people argue that all of our inner experiences could be illusions—that we might be living in a simulation like in The Matrix, or being tricked by an evil demon like Descartes imagined. Maybe love is just chemicals. Maybe our sense of justice is just evolutionary conditioning. Maybe nothing really matters.

    It's true: we can't disprove those possibilities in the way we can disprove a scientific hypothesis. But these doubts come at a cost. If you want to reject everything that comes through lived experience, you have to step outside the entire human condition. But of course, there's no way to do that. There's no "view from nowhere."

     You can doubt science from within science, because it's built to test and revise its claims. But you can't doubt the meaningfulness of life from outside life. To do so is to saw off the branch you're sitting on.

 

This kind of reasoning appropriate to meaning is not opposed to science but it is different. You can only think more deeply about by ceasing to be a distant observer and seeing it from the inside. Sometimes the most important truths are those we come to not by stepping back but by stepping in.

 

Conclusion: What Critical Thinking Often Misses

    So I have argued that “critical thinking” is more than a toolbox of logical techniques – ways to identify fallacies, break down arguments, and make decisions more rationally (though it is partly like that). Such “tools” are often presented as philosophically neutral, as if they have no implications for how we understand the world, the self, or truth itself. They assume the autonomous thinker standing outside the world, applying reason like a blade. But real thinking does not, cannot work that way.

     To think well is to accept that we are inside the world, not above it. It is to see that thinking is not separate from being. Our ideas are shaped by who we are, what we love, what we fear, and how we live. This does not make them irrational. It means they are human.

    So good thinking must go deeper than “critical thinking.” It must include self-examination, intellectual courage, humility, willingness to become aware of your metaphysical commitments, and a love of truth that goes beyond being clever or correct. The opposite of a love of truth is called being self-satisfied. Good thinking cannot be separated from the intellectual virtues of the person who thinks. It is not just a skill set. It is a way of being in the world.