critical faculties
noun
: ability to make judgments about what is good or true
She needs to learn to develop her critical faculties.
Examples of critical faculties in a Sentence
Recent Examples on the Web
Keith arrests our thinking, and cons us into suppressing our critical faculties with the same kind of internalized surveillance that philosopher Michel Foucault broke down to describe a prison’s use of the panopticon in Discipline and Punish.
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Literary Hub, 19 May 2026
These will come and go; some will be brilliant, others a full-blooded assault on your critical faculties.
—Richard Edwards, Space.com, 19 Sep. 2025
But no one with functioning critical faculties thinks of either party as holding to those positions today — just the opposite.
—Michael Hiltzik, Los Angeles Times, 25 July 2023
My father was an Air Force engineer, trained to identify every possible structural or design weakness, and my siblings and I both benefited and suffered from his overactive critical faculties.
—Lauren Kane, The New York Review of Books, 26 Nov. 2022
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Literary Hub, 19 May 2026
These will come and go; some will be brilliant, others a full-blooded assault on your critical faculties.
—Richard Edwards, Space.com, 19 Sep. 2025
But no one with functioning critical faculties thinks of either party as holding to those positions today — just the opposite.
—Michael Hiltzik, Los Angeles Times, 25 July 2023
My father was an Air Force engineer, trained to identify every possible structural or design weakness, and my siblings and I both benefited and suffered from his overactive critical faculties.
—Lauren Kane, The New York Review of Books, 26 Nov. 2022
Cite this Entry
“Critical faculties.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/critical%20faculties. Accessed 24 May. 2026.
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