Politics and Critical Thinking

Abstract

Stebbing had used examples that drew on current affairs as early as A Modern Introduction to Logic, but as the 1930s progressed her work took on an increasingly political tone. Her best-known book, Thinking to Some Purpose, published right at the end of the decade, is packed with examples taken from the speeches of politicians and from politically loaded newspaper reports and is explicitly aimed at promoting a discerning and critical attitude in the electorate. Yet Stebbing remained reticent on the subject of her own political allegiances. She reserved her harshest criticisms for the expression of views that she saw as reactionary and for the pronouncements of the Conservative government of the day. Margaret MacDonald later noted that she ‘moved steadily to the political Left in questions of social reform’.¹ But Stebbing refrained from committing herself publicly to any particular political party. In TSP she even states that ‘I, for my part, am not politically minded’, although she elaborates on this by acknowledging that while not wanting to accept political responsibilities ‘unfortunately I cannot avoid them’.²