Matthew Bowker

CRITICAL THINKING

AND THE SUBJECT OF

INQUIRY

CAPACITIES, RESILIENCE,AND POWER

A guide for teachers, learners, and trainers

ABOUT THE BOOK

Critical Thinking and the Subject of Inquiry:

Capacities, Resilience, and Power — A Guide for Teachers, Learners, and Trainers

This book reframes critical thinking as an ongoing practice of subjectivity—the capacity to make meaning, to judge, and to maintain inquiry under pressure. It explains why skills alone often fail and shows how to cultivate the capacities and resilience that keep thinking alive when it matters most. Designed for teachers, learners, and trainers, the book offers clear explanations, discussion prompts, activities for classrooms and professional settings, and guidance on engaging the political, social, and psychological dynamics that shape thought.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Matthew H. Bowker, Ph.D.

Matthew H. Bowker, Ph.D., is an internationally recognized scholar of psychology, political philosophy, and critical thought. Educated at Columbia University and the University of Maryland, College Park, he has spent twenty-five years in university teaching, research, and administration. He is Research Associate Professor of Psychology at SUNY-University at Buffalo and SUNY Reconnect Lead Adult Learning Specialist at SUNY-Niagara. Bowker is the author of more than 20 books and over 40 scholarly articles and chapters. He founded and co-edits Routledge’s Psychoanalytic Political Theory book series and serves in several editorial roles with global reach, including Editor (North America) of the Journal of Psycho-Social Studies and Associate Editor of Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society. A U.S. State Department Fulbright Specialist in “Twenty-first Century Learning,” he has trained faculty and administrators both at home and abroad and has delivered 50+ keynotes worldwide. His recent books include: The Power of Being a Subject: Transcending Myth and Machine (Routledge, 2025), Getting Lost: Reflections on Psychopolitical Isolation and Withdrawal (Karnac, 2025, with A. Buzby), Oblation—Essays, Parables, and Paradoxes (Punctum Books, 2024), The Angels Won’t Help You: Essays (Punctum, 2022), and The Destroyed World and the Guilty Self: A Psychoanalytic Study of Culture and Politics (Karnac, 2019, with David P. Levine). Bowker has taught critical thinking for over two decades at Medaille University, SUNY-University at Buffalo, and the Singapore Institute of Management. His work on the relationship between critical thinking and subjectivity has been featured nationally and internationally in outlets such as National Public Radio (NPR), The Atlantic, and Elle Magazine (UK).

Endorsements

What Readers Are Saying

Matthew H. Bowker’s book on critical thinking is probably the best work written on this deservedly fashionable topic. Unlike so many others, Bowker understands that critical thinking has to have something important to think about. The book’s second part, which covers Plato, Montaigne, Camus, Kafka, and others, illustrates what it means to think critically in a particular intellectual and cultural context. Of special interest is Bowker’s recognition that emotional states matter. Narcissists can’t learn. To learn requires that one first admit one’s ignorance. Authority and the pressures of conformity also impair critical thinking. Not just an introduction to critical thinking, Bowker’s is a tour de force from which the highly educated to the self-educated will benefit.

C. Fred Alford, Professor of Government and Distinguished Scholar-Teacher Emeritus, University of Maryland, College Park

Matthew H. Bowker’s Critical Thinking and the Subject of Inquiry inspires readers, learners, and teachers to engage with the book’s central thesis that a crisis in critical thinking impedes our personal, social, and political development as subjects with agency. Bowker innovatively reformulates the critical thinking process as one where teachers and learners move from a skills-based method toward a facilitative approach that engages the person’s autonomy as a subject, not a passive object, of our surroundings. The goals of the work are further aided by insightful discussions—spanning the periods of ancient Greece to the mid-and-late twentieth century—of a variety thinkers and their problematics, all of whom provide rich cues for becoming better critical thinkers. In Bowker’s work, readers, learners, and teachers are provided with a rich armamentarium for dynamically continuing their engagement with the psychological, political, and epistemological horizons of our world.

Jack Fong, Professor of Sociology, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona

Critical thinking is a nearly ubiquitous term in education, but the best means of understanding and teaching critical thinking are unclear or elusive. Matthew H. Bowker has given us a psychologically grounded, realistic, and ultimately hopeful portrait of critical thinking as a capacity available to anyone who is willing to undertake the challenge of developing it. Bowker’s book is essential reading for students (both young and old), teachers at all levels, and anyone aspiring to find better ways of living within the challenges of our present moment.

David W. McIvor, Professor of Political Science, Colorado State University

key features

For Educators

For K–12 teachers, department chairs, and instructional coaches who want durable critical thinking in daily lessons.

Treat critical thinking as a capacity, not a checklist.

Ready-to-use discussion prompts and classroom activities.

Work directly with power dynamics that hinder inquiry.

Practical methods to strengthen judgment and resilience

For Higher Education & Faculty Development

For universities, CTLs, program leads, and libraries building reflective courses & PD.

Adopt for first-year seminars, general education, capstones, and graduate methods.

Faculty workshops in facilitative pedagogy and learner-generated questioning.

Tools to redesign syllabi toward subjectivity and autonomy.

Support for reading groups and alignment with learning outcomes.

For Corporate & Professional Learning

For L&D teams, managers, & trainers who need stronger decisions under pressure.

Build capacities: attention, boundary-setting, tolerance for ambiguity.

Identify and counter organizational pressures that derail thinking.

Use reflection prompts for debriefs and after-action reviews.

Strengthen resilience and ethical judgment across teams.

For General Readers

For thoughtful readers of philosophy, psychology, and public life who want clear guidance without jargon.

Short, accessible chapters that invite self-reflection.

Self-study questions that translate insight into action.

Recognize conformity pressures and sustain inquiry.

Guided paths into classic texts that deepen understanding.

Matthew H. Bowker, Ph.D