Music and Critical Thinking

My process of critical thinking has three stages: 1)obtaining knowledge 2)understanding/validating the knowledge and 3)utilizing it to benefit you the most. In music, this process can help a lot, especially in performing and auditioning situations. For example, when preparing for a seating audition, you are given the excerpt/excerpts that need to be performed, this is the knowledge. Then you must learn it, listen to recordings and talk to people who have previously performed it so you can figure out how it should sound. Then you take all the information you learned and pick and choose what advice you want to take to make the excerpt musical and original to your instrument/skill. Critical thinking definitely helps in the musical setting.

A German Lesson: the Fallacy of One True Path

In Goldhagen's article, he directly compares the state of Germany before WWII with Pope Benedict XVI's way of thinking. He starts off by educating the reader that Pope Benedict (Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger) came from an "anti-Nazi family" but at age 14 joined the Hitler Youth. Right off the bat, Goldhagen expresses his skepticism towards Ratzinger and continues his article by writing about Benedict's idea of "relativism". He explains that the Germans, before the war, had this idea of "relativism", that there was only one correct world and that world was anti-Semetic. The Nazis believed that all other ways were incorrect. This statement is how Goldhagen connects the Pope to Germany. The Pope declared, in his "open and sincere dialogue" that there is only one correct path to God - through the Catholic Church. This single-minded statement is what prompted Goldhagen to juxtipose pre-WWII Germany with the Pope. Although Germany went to violent extremes in seeing their "relativism" idea come true, the Pope and Germany both believe and proclaim that there is only one correct to live this life.