This is not an innocent simplification of a rich intellectual tradition. It is a carefully engineered substitute. It sharpens analytical performance, but it neutralizes critique.
What disappears first is 𝘀𝗼𝗰𝗶𝗮𝗹 𝗰𝗿𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗾𝘂𝗲. From a dialectical critical realist perspective, this matters decisively. Problems such as burnout, precarity, or loss of dignity are not surface level malfunctions or individual cognitive errors. They are emergent effects of deeper social structures. Critical thinking does not start from isolated problems to be solved, but from identifying the underlying causal mechanisms that generate patterned suffering. As Emmanuel Renault argues, without such diagnosis people face cognitional injustice. They lack the concepts needed to understand why suffering persists and misrecognize systemic failures as personal shortcomings.
What disappears next is 𝗺𝗼𝗿𝗮𝗹 𝗰𝗿𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗾𝘂𝗲. Even when systems are accurately described, they still need to be judged. This is where ideology enters, not merely as distorted belief, but as a structuring force. Drawing on Sally Haslanger, ideology operates as a “cultural techné”, a background social operating system that organizes practices and legitimacy in ways that systematically advantage some while disadvantaging others. Reducing this to “understanding biases” individualizes what is fundamentally a morally objectionable social arrangement.
Finally, 𝗲𝗺𝗯𝗼𝗱𝗶𝗲𝗱 𝗰𝗿𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗾𝘂𝗲 vanishes almost entirely. Corporate models present critical thinking as disembodied cognition. Yet ideology and structure are lived, registered in exhaustion, anxiety, humiliation, and alienation. These experiences are not noise. They are signals that something is ontologically and morally wrong with the systems people inhabit.
None of this is missing by accident. Consulting exists to optimize and stabilize existing arrangements. A form of critical thinking that questions growth imperatives, power asymmetries, or legitimacy is not a skill here. It is a risk. What remains is a safe, instrumental version of critique, rigorous enough to feel serious, contained enough not to threaten the system that demands it.
The choice is stark. We can become ever more efficient technicians within systems that profit from our intellectual containment. Or we can reclaim critical thinking as a social, moral, and embodied practice, capable of exposing the structures that generate suffering, and of demanding their transformation.