Book Review: How to Think

This book review was included in the June 2018 Meadowcroft Monthly. For an archive of all book reviews, click here.

You’re not as smart as you think you are. Don’t worry, neither am I. That’s what makes How to Think by Baylor professor Alan Jacobs such a compelling read. Jacobs is a Christian academic who is burdened to help us to understand our own biases and prejudices in order to help us to think more clearly.

Jacobs builds off of the thought of C.S. Lewis, who gave an address known as “The Inner Ring.” In this address, Lewis said:

“I believe that in all men’s lives at certain periods, and in many men’s lives at all periods between infancy and extreme old age, one of the most dominant elements is the desire to be inside the local Ring and the terror of being left outside.”

In other words, we want the approval of certain people (our “Inner Ring”). And this is important because “of all passions the passion for the Inner Ring is most skillful in making a man who is not yet a very bad man do very bad things.” 

Jacobs’ point is that our thinking is often clouded by the groups we belong to, or want to belong to. Tribal identification often trumps logic and reason. And once we choose our tribes, it’s easy to think and argue poorly.

This leads to what is known as the “straw man” phenomenon. This involves arguing not with your intellectual opponent, but with a poor version of your opponent’s argument. Don’t believe me? Check out Facebook (hint – those posts where the tribal hero “owns” or “totally shuts down” the tribal enemy - you’re probably dealing with a straw man.)

Eventually, this type of thinking brings us to a point of considering our opponents not as humans created in God’s image but as what he calls “the repugnant cultural other.”

Jacobs doesn’t offer easy solutions – instead, he calls for us to be aware of our biases and to do our best to understand and respect the best parts of our opponents’ arguments. This will require us to step away from our beloved cultural commentators that we almost always agree with, but it will help us to think more clearly and love others more fully.