A Comparative Study on Critical Thinking in Social Philosophy of Horkheimer and “Philosophy for Children Program”

This article is a comparative study between foundations, goals, and methodology of critical thinking in social philosophy of Horkheimer and “Philosophy for children”(P4C) program, and criticizing them. In order to realize this goal 3 questions are investigated on 3 aspects of foundations, aims and methods; and their relationship is studied. The result shows some similarities and differences between them. Similarities in foundations like being affected by Socrates, emphasize on thinking position in philosophy more than metaphysical subjects. About similarities in aims intellectual growth and to create better life is common in two approaches but the meaning of better life for them is different; for Horkheimer it means creating happiness for more people but in P4C program it means living in a democratic society with responsible and thoughtful citizens. Differences like adopting with social circumstances and the place of knowledge in social critic are mentioned. In methodology the main difference is to present certain and definable method for improving critical thinking in p4c but Horkheimer argue that critical thinking is a continuous process, so he doesn’t present a definite method only speaks of negative critique. The result of this study can be used for other researchers in philosophy and philosophy of education and other educational fields, curricula developer in educational systems, especially in developing an educational model for educating critical thinking.