Critical social thought is an interdisciplinary academic major offered at several liberal arts colleges.
It addresses the fundamental questions about social life and embraces the contours of modern experience and the historical forces that have helped to shape that experience. It examines the prevailing and oppositional currents of thought; cultural representations as well as the technologies of their production and dissemination; the tensions between power and freedom, individuality and society, truth and uncertainty, creativity and order.
The program treats common sense and conventional beliefs as points of departure rather than as predetermined points of arrival. It also supports questioning the taken-for-granted regardless of the political angle from which that questioning takes place. While critical social thought introduces a broad range of established critical genres, it also encourages imaginative thinking through synthesis and bridging tendencies of thought.
Examples of topical concentrations include: Architecture and the social organization of space, disenchantment, peace and conflict, racial and ethnic identities, the Western canon and its critics.
Famous quotes containing the words critical, social and/or thought:
“The critical spirit never knows when to stop meddling.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“The American people owe it to themselves, and to the cause of free Government, to prove by their establishments for the advancement and diffusion of knowledge, that their political Institutions ... are as favorable to the intellectual and moral improvement of Man as they are conformable to his individual and social rights.”
—James Madison (1751–1836)
“Give up the feeling of responsibility, let go your hold, resign the care of your destiny to higher powers, be genuinely indifferent as to what becomes of it all and you will find not only that you gain a perfect inward relief, but often also, in addition, the particular goods you sincerely thought you were renouncing.”
—William James (1842–1910)