Critical Drinker - Embroidered

The embroidery reads “Critical Thinker”, but the word thinker is struck through with a red line and replaced by drinker. It is a joke for everyone who has spent long evenings arguing about theory, and a gentle reminder that the best seminar discussions often continue at the bar.

Critical thinking is the habit of examining claims, evidence and arguments carefully before accepting a conclusion. John Dewey, in How We Think (1910), described reflective thought as the active, persistent and careful consideration of a belief in the light of the grounds that support it – still a classic definition.

In the narrow sense, Critical Theory is the social philosophy of the Frankfurt School. Max Horkheimer defined it in his essay Traditional and Critical Theory (1937) – unlike traditional theory, it does not take society as given but analyses it in order to change it and free people from domination. Today the term also covers feminist, critical race and postcolonial theory.

Critical thinking is a general method – checking evidence, spotting fallacies, weighing arguments – that anyone can apply to any topic. Critical theory is a specific philosophical tradition with its own claims about society, power and emancipation. One is a skill, the other a school of thought.

A group of philosophers and social theorists linked to the Institute for Social Research, founded in Frankfurt in 1923. Its best-known members are Max Horkheimer, Theodor W. Adorno, Herbert Marcuse and Walter Benjamin; Jürgen Habermas is the leading figure of the second generation. They combined Marx, Freud and Hegel to analyse modern capitalist culture.

Horkheimer and Adorno's book, first circulated in 1944 and published in 1947, asks why enlightened, rational societies produced fascism and mass barbarism. Their answer is that reason, once reduced to a tool for control, turns into a new myth. The chapter on the culture industry, about mass-produced entertainment, is the most quoted part.

Latin for “in wine there is truth” – people under the influence say what they really think. The idea goes back to a fragment of the Greek poet Alcaeus, and Pliny the Elder notes in his Natural History that truth was commonly attributed to wine. Erasmus collected the Greek form in his Adagia.

A symposium was literally a Greek drinking party. In Plato's Symposium, written around 385–370 BC, guests at a banquet in Athens each give a speech in praise of love. Socrates delivers the famous account of love as ascent towards beauty itself – and, according to Alcibiades, nobody had ever seen him drunk.

For philosophy and sociology students, anyone who has survived a critical theory seminar, and friends who turn every pub night into a debate. The subtle embroidery suits everyday wear. It is available as an embroidered t-shirt, embroidered sweatshirt, embroidered premium hoodie and cap.