Thinking has, for many of us, become as passive as breathing.While it’s essential to our very existence, we devote little energy or time to cultivating it. Thought Work:Thinking, Action, and the Fate of the World challenges us to reinstate the restless, complicated activity of thinking as the heart of all education, life, and work.
Our underappreciation of careful thought has crippled our ability to sustain a moral, conscience-driven society, and it now falls to each of us to examine the underlying thought processes that guide our every action. Distinguished philosopher Elizabeth K. Minnich and evaluation studies pioneer Michael Quinn Patton gather a diverse cast of thought leaders to respond to this dilemma. From systems and strategic thinking, entrepreneurial thinking, and critical and evaluative thinking, to ethical and philosophical thinking and thinking grounded in and informed by the humanities and community organizing, this volume unpacks vital creative processes and develops schema to support increased thought training in and across individual professions.
ELIZABETH K. MINNICH is Distinguished Fellow with the Association of American Colleges & Universities and a professor of moral philosophy at Queens University. Among her publications are The Evil of Banality: On the Life and Death Importance of Thinking and Transforming Knowledge, 2nd Edition.
MICHAEL QUINN PATTON is former president of the American Evaluation Association and author of eight major evaluation research books. His most recent books are Principles-Focused Evaluation (2018), Facilitating Evaluation (2018) and Blue MarbleEvaluation for Global Systems Change (2019).
Preface: Beyond Banalities: Thinking at Work in the World
Elizabeth Minnich and Michael Patton
Acknowledgments
I: WHAT IS THINKING?
Chapter 1 Thinking about Thinking: With Hannah Arendt in Mind
Elizabeth K. Minnich
Chapter 2 Beyond Banality in Thinking about Thinking
Michael Quinn Patton
II: TEACHING THINKING
Chapter 3 The Limits of Moral Heroism
Allen Dunne
Chapter 4 Thinking Responsibly: Barriers and Pathways
Troy Duster
Chapter 5 Perceiving the Possibility of Possibility: Making Thinking the Heart of Education
Eduardo Duarte
Chapter 6 Teaching Thinking
Elizabeth K. Minnich
Chapter 7 Thoughts in Progress: Field Notes from Norway
Jan Reinert Karlsen
III: ETHICAL, MORAL, AND POLITICAL THINKING
Chapter 8 Shakespeare’s Faust: A Parable of Our Time
Gayle Greene
Chapter 9 Why Not Lie?: A Reflective Essay
Elizabeth K. Minnich
Chapter 10 Critical Thinking and Its Limitations: Can We Think Our Way Out of White Supremacy?
Stephen Brookfield
Chapter 11 Thinking like an Organizer
Si Kahn
IV: THINKING AT WORK
Chapter 12 Beyond Banal Business Practices: Reflections on Thoughtless and Thoughtful Practices of International Businesses In Developing Countries
Frederick Bird
Chapter 13 Strategic Thinking in Support of Intensive and Extensive Good
John M. Bryson, Barbara C. Crosby, and Danbi Seo
Chapter 14 Can Systems Thinking be an Antidote to Evil?
G. P. Richardson
Chapter 15 Entrepreneurial Thinking as Change Agent for Good
Mary Gowan
Chapter 16 ThoughtWork in Program Evaluation: Beyond Banality in Evaluation Practice
Michael Quinn Patton
Chapter 17 Afterword: Reflections on Thought Work
Elizabeth K. Minnich and Michael Quinn Patton
This book resolutely confronts the dangers of banality in classrooms, boardrooms, and in public. It provides timely and vital strategies for exposing and resisting seemingly innocuous silence and inaction which allows incipient violence to escalate even to the level of genocide.
— Bill Gay, professor emeritus of philosophy, UNC Charlotte
A new forum for common thinking about thinking. A real masterpiece! For everyone who believes in the value of liberal arts education, this volume ought to become a manual to pore over night and day.
— Jerzy Axer, director, Collegium Artes Liberales, University of Warsaw
Specialists from a dizzying array of disciplines provocatively engage with Minnich’s previous book, The Evil of Banality, and potently heed the call to attend to the practice of thinking across and within all fields.
— Brian R. Clack, professor of philosophy & A. Vassiliadis Director of the Humanities Center, University of San Diego
If we want to think about thinking in all its richness, unfettered and unbanistered (and we must!), this is an excellent help, with friends of thinking working in a most capacious mode.
— Stephen Bloch-Schulman, associate professor and chair of philosophy, Elon University
