Challenges of criticism in dark times: evolution of a thought

This essay synthesizes various articles and books published over five decades, a lapse in which the characteristics and attributes of what we now call genuine criticism were specified, which was the result of exerting it in questioning prevailing ideas and theories in different fields such as education in general, medical education, health research or human progress. With regard to the "dark times" of the title, they refer to our "diagnosis" of the current situation of the dominant western civilization, which we have characterized for a decade: "The human world immersed in unprecedented absolute degradation, is evidence of the exhaustion and civilizational ruin of the dominant culture that, under the relentless dominant interests of profit, has made the most sublime and despicable commodity of the human condition, and the worst atrocities and planetary devastation profitable." As for the subtitle, an update is presented to the proposals developed in the criticism of the above-mentioned fields, condensed in four tables explaining them: the way of criticism and its vicissitudes; techno-phetishism, a particular expression of civilizational collapse; attributes of criticism, and the reasons of being critical thought, in times that run.