In a fascinating essay over at First Things, R. R. Reno points out the serious negative consequences of the academy’s prizing – they might say “valorization” — of skepticism and critical thinking. If your key goal is to avoid error, he notes, that might well come at a cost, in terms of the truths you will fail to apprehend.

I would add another concern about excessive skepticism: It tends to breed its exact opposite. Man’s desire is to know; this is both his glory and his destiny. But when he uses excessive skepticism as his chief tool in the search for truth, he quickly becomes exhausted by the effort. And that’s when the ideological dogmatisms come in, offering him the gentle ease of their subtle poisons. Come in unto me, they say, and I will give you rest. If his mind had not been tired out by the struggles of dogmatic skepticism, it would have more vigor to resist the greater intellectual dangers; dangers that, especially over the past century, have done great harm not just to the intellectual world, but to the lives of countless innocents.