Book review: Critical Thinkers by Albert Rutherford

(This is book 2 from the series The Critical Thinker by Albert Rutherford.)

Rating: 4/5

This book is about the lessons we can learn about critical thinking from a selected group of renowned thinkers: Socrates, Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, Sir Francis Bacon, René Descartes, Immanuel Kant, John Stuart Mill, William Graham Sumner, and Paul and Linda Elder. As an introduction to each thinker, the author summarizes his or her thinking in a few pages. Then he highlights the main points that may help you hone your critical thinking skills.

Of course, it’s easy to synthesize the teachings of someone like Socrates, whose philosophy is not only far in the past but reached us through Plato and Xenophon. But then you get to Immanuel Kant… It’s clear for me that it’s beyond my current abilities and knowledge to understand concepts like Kant’s categorical imperatives and their implications by reading a couple of paragraphs.

From the book:

Being a good critical thinker means always asking questions that help your understanding of an issue or further your progress in resolving a problem. (…) The most important question you can ask is one that clarifies something you don’t understand. Asking good questions about a problem is crucial to solving it.

Not a breathtaking book. If you are not new to critical thinking, you won’t be surprised by its contents. But a good book nonetheless.