In Excess of Epistemology: S iegel, T aylor, H eidegger and the Conditions of Thought

H arvey S iegel's epistemologically‐informed conception of critical thinking is one of the most influential accounts of critical thinking around today. In this article, I seek to open up an account of critical thinking that goes beyond the one defended by S iegel. I do this by re‐reading an opposing view, which S iegel himself rejects as leaving epistemology (and, by implication, his epistemological account of critical thinking) ‘pretty much as it is’. This is the view proposed by C harles T aylor in his paper ‘ Overcoming Epistemology ’. Crucially, my aim here is not to defend T aylor's challenge to epistemology per se , but rather to demonstrate how, through its appeal to certain key tropes within H eideggerian philosophy, T aylor's paper opens us towards a radically different conception of thinking and the human being who thinks. Indeed, as will be argued, it is through this that T aylor and H eidegger come to offer us the resources for re‐thinking the nature of critical thinking—in a way that exceeds the epistemological, and does more justice to receptive and responsible conditions of human thought.