Class Pensamento Crítico e Envolvimento Político

The UC CRITICAL THINKING AND POLITICAL ENGAGEMENT intends to be a space for reflection, and alarm, on the need to endow the political experience with weapons that go in the opposite direction to the path of populism, understanding its mechanics.
Often centered on the construction of narratives, political discourse intends to lead the population, the voter, to choose a certain option over others. The logic of argumentation follows paths that are not always those of Cartesian rationality or ethics and the modern way of seeing society.

1. Objectives and introduction:
- Narratives, symbols, perception, authority;
- The mythological discourse;
- Common sense and popular culture;
- Cartesian logic and methodological skepticism;
- The critic".

2. The construction of Modernity:
- From the “Discourse on Voluntary Servitude” (Étienne de La Boétie, 1563) to Foucault;
- Descartes and assent;
- The State, the monopoly of violence, the search for security;
- Kant and the relationship between the subject and the world; the a priori structures; the innate, what conditions us;
- Hegel and the meaning of History; the heroes and the realization of becoming;
- Marx and alienation; the “opium of the people”.

3. The deconstruction of Modernity:
- Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle;
- Technique and Science as ideology, Habermas' vision;
- Witgenshtein: “the limits of my language are the limits of my world”
- A return to Pre-Modernity? The visions of Fukuyama and Chomsky

The work sessions will be theoretical-practical.
The evaluation is centered on carrying out an essay that has as its starting point a situation, a case, which is worked on from the point of view of creating the narrative in question.
This work is worth 75% of the evaluation (50% for the written version, and the same amount for its presentation and discussion in class), with the remaining 25% for participation in class.

Ennis, Robert H. (2015). Critical Thinking. The Palgrave Handbook of Critical Thinking in Higher Education. [S.l.]: Palgrave Macmillan. 

Glaser, Edward M. «Defining Critical Thinking». The International Center for the Assessment of Higher Order Thinking (ICAT, US)/Critical Thinking Community. Consultado em 6 de março de 2021