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POLANYI ON NIHILISM, POLITICAL AUTHORITY, AND THE VITIATION OF CONVIVIALITY

Robert M. Frazier

Keywords: Michael Polanyi, Augustine of Hippo, conviviality, authority, common good, nihilism, legitimation crisis, liberalism

ABSTRACT

This article addresses the problem of the legitimacy of authority in philosopher Michael Polanyi’s thought. Polanyi provides a model of society rooted in the common good that he calls conviviality. Conviviality creates unity amid perspectival pluralism because of its rootedness in a shared moral vision. The crisis of authority results from the absence of moral ideals that provide cohesion in society. The absence of moral ideals leads to the vitiation of conviviality and ultimately its commitment to the common good. The vitiation that occurs leaves nihilism in its wake, the product of expressive individualism and totalitarianism. In this essay, I explore three issues to clarify conviviality’s vitiation. I discuss the nature of conviviality in the first section; liberalism’s undoing of conviviality resulting in nihilism in the second section; and political authority and power in the last section.

Questions about the appropriate role of authority in society and what brings about its demise in contemporary culture are driving issues in the political landscape. Several philosophers and theologians provide analyses of the current confusion regarding authority. Habermas contends that “The exclusion of consequential practical questions from the discussion by the depoliticized public becomes extremely difficult as a result of the long-term erosion of the cultural tradition which has regulated conduct and could be presupposed as a tacit boundary condition of the political system,” and this has created a “chronic need for legitimation” (1973, 5). This erosion creates what Nisbet (1975) called the “twilight of authority” in Western culture. As such, the vitiation of culture in which authority vacates its role in providing for the “cohesion or unity” necessary for societies to exist creates a legitimation crisis. If such a need for legitimation exists, one might wonder about the origins of this crisis, offer a way to identify what the crisis is, in this case as nihilism per Polanyi, and consider the conditions necessary for authority to be rehabilitated in culture.

There seems to be a widespread recognition that the legitimation crisis is not simply a political issue and that its roots run deep in a fractured culture. Some contend that the culture itself has taken on a distinctive death-like quality. The Nobel Laureate Mario Vargas Llosa writes about “the banality of the dominant culture in which the supreme value is to amuse oneself and amuse others over and above any form of knowledge or ideals” (2012, 131). He continues, “Just to amuse themselves to forget serious, deep, disquieting, and difficult things and to indulge in light, superficial, and insanely stupid pursuits” is what characterizes the modern world. Llosa calls this the “death of culture” (ibid.). Llosa captures the dismal lethargy of a culture that walks about as zombies, dead to the true, good, and beautiful. A dead culture fails to provide the contours for its own legitimation.

Pope John Paul II calls the state of affairs that devalues the good, the true, and the beautiful a “veritable culture of death.” He writes, “It is no less true that we are confronted by an even larger reality, which can be described as a veritable structure of sin. This reality is characterized by the emergence of a culture which denies solidarity and, in many cases, takes the form of a veritable culture of death. This culture is actively fostered by powerful cultural, economic, and political currents which encourage an idea of society excessively concerned with efficiency” (1995, #12). John Paul II then goes on to describe this culture of death as a “kind of conspiracy against life itself.” This conspiracy manifests in a divisive society, a disordered economy, and a rejection of the good lived out in racism, structural evil, and actions that are destructive to life such as inhospitality and abortion.

Others, like Cornel West, account for the failed cohesion in culture and society that provides for legitimate authority by pointing to the pervasive presence of nihilism applied to American culture. In his work Race Matters, West provides an appraisal of the present state of Black America. He contends that a death-like toxicity lingers and permeates the Black experience. In the first chapter titled “Nihilism in Black America,” West proposes two main responses to the plight of African Americans in culture from the dominant political perspectives in modern America. He calls these the “liberal structuralist” and the “conservative behaviorist” approaches. Both fail to assess the conditions of Black experience because of the limitations each perspective brings to their appraisal that ultimately hinder them from seeing things as they are. After reviewing the proposals and offering critiques of each, West avers that the problem is nihilism, a kind of destruction of culture and life itself in the Black community. Three features characterize this nihilism: hopelessness, meaninglessness, and lovelessness. He writes, “Nihilism is to be understood not as a philosophic doctrine that there are no grounds for legitimate standards or authority; it is, far more, the lived experience of coping with a life of horrifying meaninglessness, hopelessness, and (most important) lovelessness. The frightening result is a numbing detachment from others and a self-destructive disposition toward the world” (1994, 22–23). He frames his analysis against the backdrop of a quote from Richard Wright’s 1949 work, 12 Million Black Voices. Wright wrote that “We black folk, our history and our present being, are a mirror of all the manifold experiences of America” (in West 1994, 17). Although Black culture is numbed by the nihilism that has produced hopelessness, meaninglessness, and lovelessness, American culture shares the same banal nihilism with its despairing acedia that masks awareness of its condition. West explores this theme in Democracy Matters: Winning the Fight against Imperialism, suggesting nihilism’s pervasive presence in American life. He writes that “what is most terrifying is the insidious growth of deadening nihilisms across political lines, nihilisms that have been suffocating the deep democratic energies in America” (2004, 26). West identifies the themes of legitimation, authority, and nihilism in a way that invites a closer examination.

Considering the concerns expressed in West, Pope John Paul II, and Llosa, in this paper I argue that Polanyi provides a persuasive account of the erosion of culture and the absence of proper authority within it in his examination of nihilism. Polanyi contends that the source of nihilism is embedded in political liberalism and its historic development. That development takes two forms. One is associated with the English political theorists of liberalism such as Locke, Bentham, and Mill, while the other is rooted in forms of Romanticism emergent from Rousseau and resulting in totalitarian systems. Polanyi writes, “The curious duality of nihilism makes it a byword for complete self-centeredness (read expressive individualism) and violent revolutionary action (read Marxism and socialism)” (LL, 103). At one point, he defines nihilism as the apathetic absence of a public spirit. Polanyi seeks to reestablish authority by contending for a common belief system of moral ideals that reestablishes the cohesion lost in culture as a result of nihilism.

Polanyi’s perspective assists us in appraising our current cultural zeitgeist. In my view, this age’s spirit is the result of the historical and ideational development of nihilism: the attempted annihilation of the true and good and beautiful and their rootedness in the Transcendent Good brought about because of the vitiation of that good. Polanyi adds clarity to what might be a comprehensive account of nihilism by uncovering the ground of this contemporary plight that affects all realms of creaturely existence. To get at Polanyi’s view on nihilism, I consider three main aspects of his position that illuminate the subject. I first explore what I want to call the reality that is vitiated by nihilism. Polanyi identifies this reality as conviviality, conjoint life or a life of good fellowship. To explore this I will examine the first part of Polanyi’s chapter on conviviality from Personal Knowledge. I then examine the vitiation of this convivial good, what I call the nihilism of conviviality, through Polanyi’s examination of the political and philosophical ideas that gave rise to the current crisis. In the last section, I offer some Polanyian suggests for the restoration of auctoritas as a substantive idea, and I outline the role it plays in providing political legitimacy in a nihilistic context.

Polanyi on the Good Reality (Society): Appraising Conviviality

Polanyi presents a careful argument concerning the kind of society required to foster the cultivation of personal knowledge as an alternative to the objectivist epistemology of the modern era. He contends that there are conditions necessary for the flourishing of the human knower. These include practices and relationships that enable, in Aristotle’s language, the proper functioning of humans. To flourish and function properly as knowers requires the “tacit component of intellectual passions” (PK, 203), and in Polanyi’s view tacit intellectual passions require a social context conducive to these and their development. That social context is conviviality, the good communal and historical reality that must be preserved if knowing is to happen.

Polanyi offers a naturalistic account of the good society in the spirit of ancient philosophy. By this I mean that culture and the good society are natural constructs that humans participate in forming, for good or ill. Unlike modern philosophy that views social organizations as a somewhat artificial arrangement enacted by self-determining agents, ancient philosophy advanced a natural account of the social/political whether we find this in Plato, Aristotle, or Augustine. The modern idea is that social contracts and the institutions emergent from these come about from the desire to preserve the conditions of self-interest by individuals within social life. In Hobbes and others in the social contract tradition, government and other institutions within social life are created to preserve the individual in modern liberalism. In classical philosophy, Aristotle’s famous quip is that “Man is social by nature,” and this reflects the heritage he had received. In Plato’s Republic, Plato denies the modern idea that a polis is a compact of sorts that preserves an individual’s self-interest as the source of society and the polis. Plato observes that no two humans are the same, and as such each person has a particular part to play in the whole of society. Hence, humans are not self-sufficient and naturally need others. To flourish and mature according to the natural structure of things, humans require contributions from others. Social cooperation and mutual concern for the common good is the focus of Plato’s republic, and this society is informed by the epistemic proposal advanced by Plato. Malformed societies are focused on individuals, their gratification, and their quest for power and domination, as Thrasymachus asserts in The Republic. These features fracture the natural fellowship humans were designed to enjoy, leading to the vitiation of the good. Interestingly, Plato suggests three individualistic forms of society that pervert the natural ordering of things (Plato 1975, Book II, 367E–372A). He identifies the luxurious society as one where wealth is controlled by a few who then order society and government for their own benefit. Later in The Republic, Plato identifies this as a plutocracy, one of the deformed political orders. Another social structure denies equality for all, excluding women from all spheres of society (philosopher kings, guardians, doctors, etc.) so that they do not have honor and authority equal to men. The last kind of malformed society is one in which violence dominates political and economic life and, as such, is at war with itself and others due to its faulty epistemology. Unnatural society is rooted in the individual libido domanandi (lust to dominate) according to Augustine in the City of God,1 a theme that Polanyi uses to explore the origins of the nihilistic culture that is the focus of my concern. Polanyi accepts the tradition that sees a good society as an altogether natural affair with its normative structure rooted in the epistemic framework of humanness.

In Polanyi’s chapter on conviviality, he sets out to establish the tacit conditions of systems of thought that advance the epistemic agenda, which he has articulated in the first six chapters of Personal Knowledge, and clarify the natural social picture of the good society. He sees these “articulate systems” (PK, 203ff.) cultivating truth, and he advocates for “coefficients” that enable a flourishing communal life (PK, 203). Polanyi believed that intellectual and moral passions are the starting point for the advance of knowledge, as these serve to keep the knower open to, anticipative of, and responsive to reality’s disclosure of itself. Proper society fosters the conditions of these passions.

For Polanyi, the intellectual passions are formative, and it is important to keep the shaping influence of some of these in mind. First, foundational to all knowing endeavors is a love of truth. Knowers in the scientific community (Polanyi’s primary example of a community of knowers) are driven by their desire to get things right. Second, Polanyi contends for an awareness of beauty manifested in all realms of reality from the structure of a concerto to the unfurling of a flower. The quest for beauty fans the love of truth itself. Third, against the Cartesian tradition that locates the beginning of inquiry in doubt, Polanyi suggests that wonder, the marveling at reality and our feeble attempts to describe it, is what keeps inquiry alive along with the other two passions just identified. As many critics have noticed, puzzling ceases the moment an answer is offered that satisfies doubt. Cartesian objectivism views the satisfaction of doubt as a verified conclusion when certain conditions are met; principal among them is the incorrigible foundational proposition from which all other assertions about reality find their anchor. The error that Polanyi takes note of is that doubt has a limited function; wonder is what keeps one alert and directs one to “future manifestations” of reality. Love of truth, desire for beauty, and the attitude of wonder yield a fourth passion, namely, the passion to avoid error. Avoidance of error functions as a passion but also as an intellectual obligation, a standard that must be met in the tacitly covenanting community for knowledge to advance. The desire to avoid error demands that one become committed to certain intellectual values and standards that make inquiry possible. Without these passions and standards vivifying and indwelling the knower (humans by nature for Polanyi), the intellectual framework of nihilism develops because, as Richard Weaver contends, “ideas have consequences” (this is the title of Weaver’s influential book), and the tacit conditions of persons knowing are vanquished. Polanyi views the failure to cultivate these passions in one’s upbringing and the structures of society as a dangerous thing resulting in a tendency to develop misformed convictions. As Plato indicated in The Republic, children ought and must learn the passions that correspond to the real (1975, 375A–E).

The welfare of human life is rooted in intellectual standards, values, and passions since humans seek to know reality independent of the knower and how it ought to be interpreted. Consequently, in light of the above, humans ought to develop a love for a certain kind of society that yields understanding, liberty, and the cultivation of the intellectual passions. In Personal Knowledge, Polanyi writes about “a network of tacit interactions on which the sharing of cultural life depends and so lead to…our adherence to a society that respects truth” (PK, 203). This is the focus of his concern for conviviality, the outcome of these interactions one might say. He continues, “Love of truth and of intellectual values in general will now appear as the love of the kind of society which fosters these values, and submission to intellectual standards will soon be seen to imply participation in a society which accepts the cultural obligation to serve these standards” (PK, 203). Polanyi, along with the whole of classical philosophy (Polanyi lauds ancient accounts on numerous occasions in his discussion of nihilism), affirms that humans are social creatures by nature and, as such, rightly engage in establishing culture and society and institutions identified with the natural needs of the social self. As a social being, one must “participate” in the cultivation of culture and its institutions. Loving the kind of society that brings about the flourishing of deliberative participation and intellectual passions follows from this set of assertions.

In the chapter on conviviality, Polanyi thus attempts to articulate the kind of society and culture that fosters human advances. Authority has a necessary part to play in its cultivation, as I will later note. However, Polanyi begins his discussion with an examination of the grounds of communication involving the sharing of a common set of articulated symbols and signs that help one make sense of one’s experience. Language is expressive and interactive, and the tacit understanding of these symbols helps create certain emotional attachments to the culture as a whole and to others within it. As an illustration of this principle, when I go to the football games of my high school, as we stand to sing the Alma Mater, I, along with other graduates, joyfully sing the words (symbols) of the song, and these elicit the emotions of community, commitment, and belonging. Language learned in social contexts helps foster and perpetuate a particular culture. Proper language will contribute to good society; conversely, violent language will engender destructive cultures. Humans mimic (mimesis) those who pass on the symbols and signs with their accompanying emotions, and the culture is commensurate with what those symbols and emotions perpetuate. It is important, then, that the “lore” associated with culture is transmitted through authorities (parents, teachers, clergy, and the like) who love and value the society, hopefully the good society.

Ritual plays a central role in creating the conditions of a convivial society. Rituals help to form and shape the conviviality associated with the good society, which ought to be loved and respected. Ritual fosters cooperation and participation in convivial society. Polanyi avers, “By fully participating in a ritual, the members of a group affirm the community of their existence, and at the same time identify the life of their group with that of antecedent groups, from whom the ritual has descended to them. Every ritual act of a group is to this extent a reconciliation within the group and a re-establishment of continuity with its own history as a group” (PK, 211). In other words, rituals are embodied practices in which the values and mutual commitments of a society are enacted. This enacted practice keeps alive the “history of a group” and provides for “coherence” in the group. Polanyi’s use of ritual reminds one of MacIntyre’s definition of a practice as “any coherent and complex form of socially established cooperative human activity through which goods internal to that form of activity are realized in the course of trying to achieve those standards of excellence” (1984, 187) to the end and goals of those groups. Rituals for Polanyi are essential to the convivial society he seeks. He continues that “rituals are celebrations of convivial existence,” and as such, “they incur hostility of individualism, which denies value to group life as a form of being” (PK, 211). Ritual is deprecated by two dominant manifestations of individualism, utilitarianism and romanticism, which Polanyi will later identify as the prevailing ideas in the process toward a nihilistic society over against the convivial or good society, i.e., “the cultivation of good fellowship” (PK, 210).

As Polanyi continues to elaborate and articulate the contours of a good society, he claims that this society will have a particular kind of organization. The kind of society he has mapped out thus far produces sentiments of good fellowship and intimacy. There must as well be an organizational structure to this society that encourages conviviality and fellowship. Polanyi contends that common values learned through communication and transmission foster “interpersonal appreciations laid down by morality, custom, and law” (PK, 215). These conditions that enliven shared values serve the “common good” for the society and its inhabitants. He writes that “such sharing constitutes an orthodoxy upholding certain intellectual and artistic standards, and an undertaking to engage in the pursuits guided by them, which amounts in effect to a recognition of cultural obligations” (PK, 212). The obligations lay claim to the “value of group life” and elevate the interests of the group and the pursuit of the common good over private interest so that the activities of “subversion and destruction” might be averted from beyond the group. The interests of the group do not always override the interests of the individual, but there are occasions in which this is the case. The good society, the mutual esteeming society, will manifest an interpersonal feeling of fellowship and obligation rooted in a common commitment to law and moral principles, which he will call “ideals,” and in adherence to custom manifested in shared rituals that together serve the social nature of humans as they strive for the common good (PK, 215).

To achieve the kind of society outlined here demands organization, and this organization requires that certain conditions be acknowledged. Polanyi writes, “the framework of cultural and ritual fellowship reveals primordially the four coefficients of societal organization…. Two of these coefficients recall the two ways of satisfying intellectual passions on an articulate level, namely by affirmation or indwelling: the first is the sharing of convictions, the second the sharing of fellowship. The third coefficient is co-operation; the fourth the exercise of authority or coercion” (PK, 212). These have corresponding realms in which they are exercised: institutions of culture; group loyalty; the economic system; and public power. Polanyi rightly argues that these fit together in the formation of the good society. He warns that when power relations are imposed on a society without the shared fellowship and beliefs in values, passions, moral principles, and law discussed above, this leads to a totalitarian state in which both the individual and the social bond of society are sacrificed. Of course, power relationships are established by determining whose interests and ends are the constraining elements. As Augustine points out in the City of God, the power broker seeks to establish the conditions for self-interest to prevail through intimidation, deception, and creating an illusion about society that fosters that end (2003, Book V, 195–215). The mutually supportive coefficients mitigate the fragmentation of society in which one of these, such as power, might prevail. Epistemologically, the fragmentation of our beliefs into compartments isolated from other pockets of beliefs leads to deception and delusion. To elevate power over the other parts of the organization of society destroys freedom and authority, and this is what occurs in badly formed contexts.

Finally, Polanyi explores the role that moral beliefs and rules play in sustaining the good society. Moral beliefs and rules enable agents to make good judgments within a culture, whether individual or civic. He writes that “we see that while some systems of social lore are cultivated for the sake of our intellectual life as individuals, others are cultivated by the act of ordering our lives socially in accordance with them” (PK, 215). It is ordering lives accordingly “by the same morality, custom, and law which conjointly constitute the mores of their society” (PK, 215). The moral convictions and passions that people in a given society share and then live out through practice and ritual form what Polanyi calls the civic culture. These values need to be embedded in the citizenry itself so that they might become free, deliberative agents working cooperatively and civilly with other members of society. The ongoing clarifications of the moral ideals are fleshed out through dialogue and shared life, providing those in authority the framework to apply the ideals in decisions about the culture. Polanyi contends that “the constitution of a free society expresses its acknowledgement of these passions and standards. Its government (the fourth of the coefficients of the social discussed above) bows in advance to the moral consensus freely arrived at by its citizens…because they are deemed competent to decide rightly as the authentic spokesman of the social conscience” (PK, 223). Although the moral ideals of a civic society (such as virtue, justice, and prudence) remain somewhat constant and are exercised in pursuit of the common good and conviviality, the innovative application of them in law and custom produces the evolution of a society.

Polanyi uses law as an illustration of the confluence of moral ideals, standards, and passions mentioned above. He sets out to offer a brief but telling critique of the dominant legal philosophy in his day, legal positivism. He defines legal positivism as the theory “which refuses to qualify in any way the ultimate authority of the basic norm of a given legal structure” (PK, 223). In other words, legal positivism describes the current state of law without appeal to an overarching conception of the good or independent realities like virtue, justice, and prudence. The kind of analysis that Polanyi has offered in terms of the convivially good society that provides for the conditions of legitimation is vacated, leaving the social structure in the kind of perpetual crisis mentioned in the opening paragraph of this paper. Polanyi offers an alternative to philosophical positivism that advances that only statements empirically verifiable or mathematically demonstrable are meaningful, and hence, statements of value and religion are empty, vacuous. Polanyi has shown the contrary; such statements of value and commitments to them are required for the common good and for the intellectual enterprise necessary for its continuation. Later, Polanyi will identify legal and philosophical positivism as rooted in a fundamental nihilism.

In the opening sections of Polanyi’s chapter on conviviality, he has laid out the contours of the kind of good society that will promote the public spirit. To be dialogue partners in this realm requires the cultivation of intellectual passions along with guidance from intellectual standards that have been forged through learning communities through the years. Polanyi claimed that love for a society that cultivates these must ensue. I have summarized these contours in what precedes. Polanyi contends that what I am calling contours (what he has identified as articulate systems) must be indwelled by those seeking the good society. In his article “On the Modern Mind,” Polanyi claims that “indwelling operates on all levels of society” and that we “rely on the conditions of indwelling as one seeks to be aware of the ‘coherent reality’ that one seeks” (1965, 17). In my forthcoming discussion on the demise of the conditions of love of a particular convivial society, I will call this vitiation nihilism.

Nihilism as the Vitiation of “Conviviality”

Polanyi explores the ideas behind the development of nihilism in a variety of places in his works. These appear as independent articles and chapters or parts of chapters in his books. For example, in Personal Knowledge, in the chapter on conviviality we examined above after looking at the contours of the good society to be loved, Polanyi discusses power politics and how totalitarianism emerges from misplaced power. (It is important to note that totalitarianism was a great concern for Polanyi and certainly related to his own experience. Totalitarianism is one type of political system that results from nihilism.)

Common features are found in many of these pieces. Two dominant features frequently appear. First, Polanyi provides a historical framework to understand the development of nihilism. If ideas result in actions, attitudes, and habits, then identifying these ideas is necessary for historic comprehension. Although Polanyi is critical of Hegel as contributing to the development of nihilism, Polanyi’s position is like Hegel’s contention that the zeitgeist manifests historically in the forms of social life. The second feature is that Polanyi contends that liberalism in its initial modern form championed two things: an anti-authoritarianism that rejects tradition and authority as important in forming intellectual life; and philosophic doubt or skepticism as the starting point of all inquiry. The former results from the latter. Hence, Polanyi contends that liberalism, its development and main ideas, is the culprit behind modern nihilism. Polanyi writes that the political motives that produced totalitarianism were “supplied by the liberal movement itself, wherever, unrestrained by proper authority, it degenerated into nihilism” (2016, 201). In what follows I will explore these two dominant features, keeping in mind that nihilism is the vitiation of the good society worthy of love, and such a society has no public spirit.

Historically, the roots of liberalism that lead to nihilism begin with the Renaissance and its emphasis on classical culture. Renaissance culture, according to Polanyi, advocated a “liberalism resembling pre-Christian antiquity” (LL, 93). Had this form of liberalism with its emphasis on “freedom of thought” prevailed without cooption from modern liberalism, liberty would have been present “everywhere.” It was the Ionians in the sixth century who advocated this kind of liberalism with its “emancipation of the human mind from a mythological and magical interpretation of the universe” (LL, 10). (Polanyi tempers this view a bit because he recognizes that the Ionians elicited a response in an ancient form of skepticism that impeded liberty of thought.) This early modern vision of liberalism soon met with the fracturing of Christendom and the religious wars that resulted (LL, 94). The liberalism that emerged from these wars turned on a kind of “detestation” of “religious fanaticism” that was present in the religious wars (LL, 94). The emergent form of liberalism “appealed to reason for a cessation of religious strife” and advised to look for non-religious solutions to the animosity that remained between Protestants and Catholics (LL, 94).

The reason-based foundation of liberalism, which became known as the Enlightenment, developed into a secularism that would, in the course of time, encompass all of Western culture. The result of the detestation of religion in response to religious hostility was a sign that “manifested” itself in the rapid secularization of Europe in the eighteenth century. The messianic zeal that was a component in the expansion of historic Christianity continued in liberalism itself, but without the foundation of Christian moral ideas. Further, the growth of liberalism took two forms. One of these was the British version inspired by the work of John Milton and John Locke, while the other was rooted in Voltaire and the French encyclopedists. The Lockean/Miltonian form provided the philosophical framework for the evolution of the new science that “served as a major example for emancipating knowledge from religious dogma” (KB, 5) and the metaphysical/teleological framework of Aristotelean cosmology forged in Catholicism via St. Thomas Aquinas. In other words, the kind of secularization mentioned in the previous paragraph was fostered in society by the scientific commitments of Newton and Galileo.

The French Enlightenment had a secularizing trajectory distinctive to its philosophical commitments. Polanyi suggests that its mood was principally hostile or “angry” to religion, especially the Roman Catholic Church, which had dominated French culture for centuries. He says that the French Enlightenment moved to a more “extreme position” (LL, 95). The French reaction promised that there would be “relief from all social ills” (LL, 95). Adopting Lucretius’s dictum, “Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum” (“what evils religion has inspired”) (LL, 95), the French perspective took a much more radical and aggressive approach to clerics and the church in general. The confidence this movement had in the purity of human life rooted in reason over against the church came to a watershed moment in the work of Rousseau. Rousseau believed that society had corrupted the innocence and dignity of human life. Consequently, although Nietzsche would later write that one needs to move beyond good and evil, Rousseau contended that the more important focus should be on humans “before good and evil.” That is, humans were good, innocent at the beginning, but, like Emile, society corrupted them. He contended that “man’s original virtue had been corrupted and his person enslaved.” Consequently, to gain the kind of liberty and freedom that the Enlightenment liberalism promised required a deference by the society to a common power that mediated the “general will” of the people by creating the very conditions necessary for the rational liberation of humans. The common power represented the form of the social contract of individual wills clamoring over their impotence and consequently needing to have some other agent mediate on their behalf. For Hobbes, and ultimately this tradition that Rousseau presumes to be the case, subjects cannot change the form of government once adopted and must submit to the rule of the sovereign charged with preserving them from the hostility of another—a harkening back to the religious wars that gave rise to the modern form of liberalism. One gives over the power of self-determination to an all-powerful sovereign reminiscent of Hobbes’s sovereign in the Leviathan (1968, Book Two).

There are clear negative implications for the kind of society Hobbes envisions, which replaces the model where the polis ought to be loved so that conviviality might ensue. The sovereign in this system develops laws that by necessity must be followed by the members of the civitas who fear violence from another. Those disobeying these laws would face punishment. Further, the sovereign, since he makes the laws, cannot be condemned by the laws, hence placing him above or beyond the law. These laws are not necessarily grounded in the ongoing moral ideals expressed in law and conviviality. More so, they represent principles established by the sovereign because of their pragmatic value in preserving members of the polis from a violent and sudden death, the foundation of the Hobbesian social contract model. Given the power associated within the social contract, the sovereign masks his motivation to satisfy self-interest and enacts laws to protect his status. Polanyi points out that Rousseau adopted the Hobbesian model of sovereignty, based on the sovereign’s representation of the general will of the people. In Hobbes, this mode of governance is sustained by the darkness and fear of humans within a society. Rousseau, although supporting the status of the sovereign like Hobbes, locates the cohesion of the socially contracted society bound together by the general will; this is his romantic view of human life. Recalling that Rousseau believed “man’s original virtue had been corrupted,” Polanyi sees him unleashing a “moral fury” that attacked “all that is of good repute; all accepted manners, custom, and law” (KB, 6). Rousseau’s romantic commitment to individualism (a central dogma of liberalism as we have seen) gave rise to its application to a nation (which is led by a sovereign who mediates the general will), adopting individuality’s claim to “realize its own powers” (LL, 100). The sovereign who leads a nation combines the notion of the “supremacy of uniqueness” (individualism) with the unique “national destiny” of the people. This requires an “absolute allegiance of all its citizens” to the state. The sovereign in this Rousseauean schema “stands entranced in the admiration of his own uniqueness, while identifying his personal ambitions with the destiny of the nation lying at his feet” (LL, 100). This leads to the social form of nihilism identified as “nationalism” (LL, 101).

The historical unfolding of the rejection of conviviality results in social nihilism. The nationalistic spirit that results from Rousseau’s romanticism is spurred on according to Polanyi by scholars like Marx and Hegel—Hegel with his justification of nationalism in his philosophy of right and Marx in his historical materialism. These forms of nihilism vacate the hopes of the free person that emerged during the Renaissance.

To sharpen my Polanyian analysis of nihilism’s rejection of conviviality, we turn now to the basic principles of the liberalism he rejects. In Polanyi’s view, the dogmas of modern liberalism inevitably led to the rise of romanticism, nationalism, and historical materialism, in a word, social nihilism. He writes, “The ideology of total revolution (i.e., French) is a variant of the derivation of absolutism from absolute individualism…. For this purpose you must take power.” And “to achieve a comprehensive improvement of society you need comprehensive powers” (KB, 13), i.e., absolute sovereignty. Secularization led to the notion of an absolute sovereign in the French appropriation of the revolutionary spirit that gave rise to the romantic form of nationalistic sovereignty, and this culminated in the Hegelian and Marxian reich and historical materialism.

Moving on, Polanyi locates the key dogmas of British liberalism in the works of Milton and Locke. Although this highlights “Anglo-American liberalism” in his critique, Polanyi is quite clear that the notions of European liberalism are grounded in these principles. A common account of the principles of liberalism is found in The Logic of Liberty, “Authority in a Free Society,” and Meaning as well as other works that address this issue. He writes, “Anglo-American liberalism was first formulated by Milton and Locke. Their argument for freedom of thought was two-fold” (LL, 94). Milton contributed the first principle, which Polanyi calls “anti-authoritarian.” Polanyi writes that “its programme was to let everyone state his beliefs and to allow people to listen and form their own opinion; the ideas which would prevail in a free and open battle of wits would be as close an approximation to the truth as can be humanly achieved” (LL, 94). He continues, “this is the anti-authoritarian formula of liberty” (ibid.). Agents can stand apart from their traditions and evaluate assertions independent of these. In the history of epistemology, Milton accepts an aspect of Cartesianism that is identified as internalism. This aspect holds that one has the capacity to set aside beliefs held as a kind of unencumbered observer and perceive each inferential connection without reference to these background beliefs. This position breeds distrust of authority and promotes the autonomous rational agent capable of assent without reference to tradition (LL, 8, 15).

The second principle is derived from John Locke, who is often cited as the father of modern liberalism. It claims that one should occupy a kind of philosophic doubt as one considers competing claims to the truth. This position makes two assertions. The first is that the reason one should exercise philosophic doubt is because one ought not to believe something unless it has significant and substantial adjudication. To accept something based on tradition or authority is to violate one’s intellectual duties. This yields the second aspect of the principle of philosophic doubt: that “we can never be so sure of the truth as to warrant the imposition of our views on others” (Polanyi 1949, 348). Of course, this implies that authority is an imposition of beliefs from one to another, but it also renders suspicious positions that the most reliable agents might render. These together express the dominant position in modern culture, suggesting generally that one should not believe something without adequate substantiation. This might be called the modern ethics of belief; to violate these conditions is to believe immorally and to flout one’s epistemic and political duties. Polanyi’s work revisits an important insight from the classical writers that one’s politics is built on one’s epistemology and metaphysics. I believe that it is quite instructive that after Polanyi discusses conviviality, he follows with a critique in Personal Knowledge of what I am calling the ethics of belief rooted in Locke and modern epistemology.

Polanyi sees this approach to questions about morally permissible beliefs as yielding what he calls positivism. A feature of positivism is its confidence that one can have full access to one’s belief states, and unless these are verified empirically, such beliefs states are meaningless. Although not by name, Polanyi addresses the inadequacy of internalism. In Section 5 of “The Logic of Affirmation,” titled “The Personal Mode of Knowing” (PK, 252-253), he uncovers this inadequacy. He writes, “I must admit now that I did not start the present reconsiderations of my beliefs with a clean slate of unbelief. Far from it, I started as a person intellectually fashioned by a particular idiom, acquired through my affiliation to a civilization that prevailed in the places where I had grown up. This has been the matrix of my intellectual efforts.” Tacitness implies that “I could explore my meaning up to a point, I believe that my words (descriptive words) must mean more than I shall ever know, if they are to mean anything at all” (PK, 252). In a beautiful and telling passage, he writes, “A truthful statement commits the speaker to a belief in what he has asserted: he embarks in it on an open sea of limitless implications. An untruthful statement withholds this belief, launching a leaking vessel for others to board and sink in it” (PK, 252). The vessel metaphor is interesting considering Clifford’s earlier use. For Polanyi to disregard and not see the positive status of stable beliefs without the full-blown access to these is to sink. In the end, “objectivism requires a specifiably functioning mindless knower” (PK, 264).

In the chapter titled “The Critique of Doubt,” Polanyi brings into focus the misuse of the objectivist’s epistemic internalism. He contends that “the ideal of a virgin mind is to be pursued to its logical limit, [and] we have to face the fact that every perception of things, involves implications about the nature of things which could be false” (PK, 296). The inferential access of the internalist is limiting the grand possibilities of comprehending a deeper appreciation and critical apprehension of the beliefs one holds. Given that one “embodies” the context of one’s past and culture, Polanyi asserts that changes and alterations happen within it as one indwells one’s beliefs, and this is a good thing. The idea of an ethics of belief that requires satisfaction of doubt prior to assent does not take into account intellectual passions that keep alive the hope of seeing new things in old and of pursuing the indeterminate future manifestation of a reality that keeps alive the prospects of inquiry. For Polanyi, rationalism has promoted a skewed sense of doubt that in the end is “illusory.” There is indeed a positive place for doubt in the fiduciary programme that Polanyi promotes that does not require the impossible task of suspending one’s beliefs. It requires a rejection of the internalism implicit in the dominant critical tradition of the ethics of belief.

A third area of criticism pertaining to the critical notion of an ethics of belief is found in what George Mavrodes called the “threshold” requirement of this tradition. The threshold requirement suggests that unless sufficiency is met, one is immoral in holding a belief. Determining that level of sufficiency is behind what Locke averred as the proportionality principle, which was rooted in his conception of probability. For Polanyi, this idea distorts what commitment entails in believing. This “regulative principle” denies, disguises, or minimizes the fact that one is already holding a belief prior to beginning an examination of it (PK, 307). To believe is risky business; one has “staked his life” in commitment to something. Polanyi further contends that “to postpone decisions on account of their conceivable fallibility would necessarily block all decisions for ever and pile up the hazards of hesitation to infinity. It would amount to voluntary mental stupor. Stupor alone can eliminate both belief and error” (PK, 307). The threshold requirement, as the objectivist tradition of an ethics of belief contends, would create a “strict skepticism” and “deny itself the possibility of advocating its own doctrine.” Its realization is “unattainable.”

Considering this discussion of the ethics of belief and the priority of fiduciary considerations and the barrenness of the modern position, Polanyi shows the implications of such a position. He writes, “The argument of doubt put forward by Locke in favor of tolerance says that since it is impossible to demonstrate which religion is true, we should admit them all. This implies that we must not impose beliefs that are not demonstrable” (LL, 97). Polanyi is concerned about what beliefs might fall in the category of the indemonstrable and concludes that ethical principles are this kind of belief. And so the implication of the Lockean position is that one must refrain “from imposing them and should tolerate their total denial” (LL, 97). But if ethical principles cannot be held without recourse to empirical verification, then “you cannot prove the obligation to tell the truth, to uphold justice and mercy. It would follow therefore that a system of mendacity, lawlessness, and cruelty is to be accepted as an alternative to ethical principles on equal terms” (LL, 97). This kind of liberalism with its conception of freedom ultimately destroys the “field of traditional ideals” (ibid.). As these values and norms are derailed from framing society, the conviviality necessary for the good society is vitiated.

Several other principles emerge from British liberalism that contribute to the growth of nihilism. The confidence in progress and rationality leads inevitably to belief in the melioration of culture and the cessation of the animosities embedded in religion. Further, Polanyi points out that in the absence of transcendental ideals for the moral life, pleasure and pain are elevated as the source of the moral life. This emphasis on pleasure and pain yields John S. Mill’s assertion that “utilitarianism” is the ethical system that accounts for the origin of ethics in pleasure and pain. This gives an Anglo-American framework for promoting the rise of nationalistic supremacy discussed above.

Polanyi’s perspective aids us in recognizing two other Anglo-American positions that support this move. The first is from Locke and the second is from Mill. In Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding, he draws out the implications of the philosophical voluntarism that emerged in the late medieval period. By this I mean that a significant focus of thought occurred metaphysically in what Charles Taylor calls “disembeddedness” (2007, 148–158). Disembeddedness is the shift from seeing all that there is as receiving its life and being sustained in life by its participation in the Divine. As the poet Posidonius suggested and the Apostle Paul affirmed, “we live and move and have our being in God” (Acts 17:28), and all things hold together in Christ (Colossians 1:17). This historic position provided an anchoring of the transcendental ideas that Polanyi makes much of in discussing conviviality and the love of the good society. Disembeddedness elevated the will to a place of supremacy in human life. Locke takes up this position on the will and claims that it is the capacity and power to determine self, one’s values, and one’s action. The implication is that no longer must one ask the question of who is mankind by appealing to God as his origin; the power of the will in self-choosing and in self-identity is the determining factor. And freedom or liberty is absence of constraints on the will to self-determination over against the Augustinian principle that freedom is to live in submission to the true and good and beautiful (Augustine 1964, Book II).

If this determination of self is foundational for liberalism, then it is quite clear that Mill’s harm principle follows. His principle claims that actions of self-determining agents are permissible insofar as they do not harm someone else in realizing self-determining desires and wants. The will is the power to make such choices about the self and the self’s interest, and this should be unencumbered until it impedes someone else from achieving the same. Polanyi views these things as part of the radical individualism that is intrinsic to liberalism.

Contours of Political Authority

In the present context of political theory, numerous writers have voiced concern over the demise of authority in the publica. As noted earlier, Robert Nisbet describes what he calls the “twilight of authority” in his book by that title based on the compromised political yearnings of citizenry coupled with the rise of the bureaucratic state. And as referenced earlier, Jurgen Habermas laments what he calls the legitimation crisis that has resulted from a lack of moral framework and served to define what is warranted and not warranted in the civitas. He writes, “the exclusion of consequential practical questions from the discussion by the depoliticized public becomes extremely difficult as a result of the long-term erosion of the cultural tradition which has regulated conduct and which, until now, could be presupposed as the tacit boundary condition of the political system. Because of this, a chronic need for legitimation is developing” (1973, 5). Hannah Arendt blames the confusion over authority on the severing of political life from the older, classical tradition of republicanism that gave society stability and resolve. She writes, “Its loss (authority) is tantamount to the loss of the groundwork of the world” and consequently its annihilation. Authority, she contends, “gave the world permanence and durability” (1961, 96). Finally, Richard Friedman locates the loss of authority in the failure to establish the grounds of cohesiveness in society: belief or rules (1973, 122–123). These positions suggest that we seem to be at a loss to distinguish and define what authority entails. I contend that we might learn again from Augustine’s view of power and authority, which is rooted in both the biblical and philosophical traditions, and then explore its insights in light of Polanyi’s concept of conviviality.

In a nihilistic social realm, asserting any grounds of authority is illegitimate, and one might claim that one cannot regain the grounds of legitimacy via the illegitimate grounds of social life that obtains in the two forms of liberalism suggested above. Further, in place of legitimate hegemony, power fills the void vacated by proper authority as the production of intended ends, as Russell argues in Power: A New Social Analysis (1975, 25), which serves the interest of the one with power over against the common good essential for inclusive conviviality. We see this kind of analysis in The City of God’s replacement of authority through an examination of Augustine’s concept of power. Augustine views power as a multi-dimensional and potentially retrogressive idea. Retrogression occurs when the character of the one in power is increasingly characterized by the vice of pride manifesting itself in libido domanandi, the lust to dominate. When retrogression occurs, power as libido domanandi directs the institutions, laws, narratives, and attitudes of the civitas toward its own end, not the end of the commonwealth. So the full picture of power, a term of influence for intended effects, involves four elements: the motivation of the one in power; the question of whose interest is at stake, the character (virtue or vice) possessed by the power broker; and the types of responses given by those subject to the power broker. Power, in its coercive form, is indeed the result of the growing nihilism of the vitiated shalomic design captured in conviviality (Augustine 2003, Book XIX).

For Polanyi, authority is a necessary component of the model of conviviality that he presents. And we might say as well that conviviality is necessary for authority to function in the right way. I suggest that authority is a relationship between two or more persons in which one is identified as superior and the other(s) is (are) viewed as somehow inferior in that relationship. To say that one is superior is simply to recognize that one brokers the relationship with another whom we might identify as the subject of that authority. Of course, those subject to another’s authority must recognize that the broker bears the marks of authority, discussed below. “Authority” is a term of relation in which one, the superior, influences the other to believe and/or to perform actions in ways commensurate with the authority’s directive. The motivation for the authority derives from his/her concern for the interests of those subject to that authority in the context of the publica. The subject of authority, for this relationship to obtain, must give his/her consent to the plan of action or belief proposed by the bearer of authority. One further observation: given that authority is a surrendering of one’s private judgment, the subject of authority bears responsibility for recognizing that the bearer of authority manifests the mark of authority. In other words, the subject in authority relationships is not intellectually passive. In proper authority relationships, the bearer of authority covenants and promises with the subject in that relationship to mediate, induct into, and interpret some field/realm/area for the welfare, the good, of the other. In proper relationships of this kind, the bearer seeks to usher the subject of his/her authority into the arena that together they might bear mutual authority. Unlike power relationships where the goal is the perennial inferiority of the subject of that relationship to serve the ends and interests of the one in power (the political nihilism effect), in authority relationships, the design is to enable the subject to indwell the values, laws, traditions, standards, and the like of the convivial society.

Polanyi commends the priority of belief over rules in authority relationships that serve conviviality. Common beliefs are located in the tradition of an affiliated group. Shared beliefs provide a cohesive purview on which members of a community rely, and an authority is one who has been formed by them in such a way that he/she can speak from the tradition to guide others. The interpretive mastery of a tradition with its particulars serving the larger scope of known things is at the heart of authority. Knowing the tradition in the Polanyian sense that one indwells the aspects of it enables tradition to function in a “transparent” way (Cochran 1977, 555). This “allows reality to shine through” (ibid.).

Tradition is inadequate on its own without authority. One must adopt the value and perspective of the tradition in a community, and this is done through its authority structure. Cochran continues, “The learner must ‘affiliate’ himself to a community that cultivates the tradition of knowledge to which he aspires, that appreciates its values and strives to act by its standards” (ibid., discussing Polanyi’s discussion of tradition and authority in PK, 207). The convivial order “makes fellowship, communication, and participation in joint activities possible.” Cochran writes, “Authority is necessary to keep the community together and to keep it directed toward its end. Authority is necessary to suppress deviation through mutual control, but even more basic is its function in pointing to new possibilities for discovery with the tradition” (ibid.). The vital role of authority is to foster unity and thereby sustain it as a community and to order things so that new possibilities for discovery within the community have a foundation.

Polanyi supports these claims in “On Liberalism and Liberty” (SEP, 199–209). About tradition or received knowledge, he writes, “all formulations of liberal principles (ones that are necessary for the convivial society) must derive their meaning from a prior knowledge, diffused inarticulately among the citizens” (203). Further, “the political and moral authority correlated to freedom is the authority of this tradition” (203). Since civility is required in society and is a mark of conviviality, “authority ensures civil intercourse, disseminates a widespread sense of public responsibility, and fosters affection for one’s own people” (203). Without legitimate authority’s guidance, the nihilistic “malaise” of society might spread. Consequently, legitimate authority is rooted in the transcendental moral ideals discussed earlier in this essay and supplies the moral framework that Habermas fears has been lost in the modern world.

Authority is necessary for the convivial community and can be understood in the old Roman notion of “auctoritas.” In terms of this old notion, authority in Polanyi’s convivial community claims a right to be believed given that the one who exercises proper authority bears the mark of indwelling and participating in the tradition of beliefs required for such a society. An authority promotes the beliefs of the community, as these reflect the truth and the transcendental ideas that undergird all of reality. The notion of authority makes meaningful the life, shared rituals, and language of a community. This kind of authority directs the community toward the common good of the community and reveals their shared values.

I have suggested in this paper that without legitimate grounds for the social order, the legitimation crisis of the moment will not be solved. In this crisis, we simply cannot continue to hold to the forms of shared life that vitiate conviviality, the very framework that makes life together possible and beneficial. Nihilism is the pollution or degrading of shared life convivially in and through tradition, shared beliefs, values, ritual, law, communication, and truth. This convivial life makes possible the continued discovery of presently indeterminate revelations of the ultimate order of things. For this to occur, a restoration of the idea of authority divorced from power that serves its own ends and not the common good is needed. Polanyi points us in the direction of such restoration.

ENDNOTES

1Augustine takes up this idea in the introduction to the City of God and uses it throughout the text.

REFERENCES

Arendt, Hannah. 1961, Between Past and Future. New York: Viking Press.

Augustine of Hippo. 1964. On the Free Choice of the Will. New York: Bobbs-Merrill Press.

———. 2003. City of God. Translated by Henry Bettenson. New York: Penguin Classics.

Cochran, Clarke. 1977. “Authority and Community: The Contributions of Carl Friedrich, Yves Simon, and Michael Polanyi.” The American Political Review 71, no. 2.

Friedman, Richard. 1973. “On the Concept of Authority in Political Philosophy.” In R. E. Flathman, editor, Concepts of Social and Political Philosophy. New York: Macmillan Publishing Co.

Habermas, Jurgen. 1973. Theory and Practice. Translated by John Viertal. Boston: Beacon Press.

Hobbes, Thomas. 1968. Leviathan. New York: Penguin Classics.

John Paul II. 1995. Evangelium Vitae [Encyclical Letter on the Value and Inviolability of Human Life]. The Holy See. https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_25031995_evangelium-vitae.html.

Llosa, Mario Vargas. 2012. Notes on the Death of Culture. New York: Picador.

Locke, John. 1997. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. New York: Penguin Classics.

———. 2003. Two Treatises of Government and a Letter Concerning Toleration. Edited by Ian Shapiro. New Haven: Yale University Press.

MacIntyre, Alasdair. 1984. After Virtue. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame.

Nisbet, Robert. 1975. Twilight of Authority. New York: Oxford University Press.

Plato. 1975. The Republic. Translated by F. M. Cornford. New York: Oxford University Press.

Polanyi, Michael. 1949. “Authority of the Free Society.” The Nineteenth Century and After 146 (July): 347–360.

———. 1951. Logic of Liberty: Reflections and Rejoinders. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

———. 1958/1962. Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

———. 1965. “On the Modern Mind,” Encounter (24:12-20) May.

———. Knowing and Being. 1974. Edited by Marjorie Greene. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

———. 2016. “On Liberalism and Liberty,” in Society, Economics, and Philosophy. Ed. R.T. Allen. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers.

Russell, Bertrand. 1975. Power: A New Social Analysis. London: Unwin Paperbacks.

Taylor, Charles. 2007. The Secular Age. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Weaver, Richard. 1948. Ideas Have Consequences. Chicago: Chicago University Press.

West, Cornel. 1994. Race Matters. New York: Vintage Press.

———. 2004. Democracy Matters: Winning the Fight Against Imperialism. New York: Penguin Press.

LEARNING TO BE POST-CRITICAL: AN INTERVIEW WITH DALE CANNON

Martin Turkis

Keywords: Michael Polanyi, William Poteat, critical, post-critical, post-modern

ABSTRACT

Interviewer Martin Turkis focuses on Dale Cannon’s intellectual career in relation to Polanyi studies, how he was introduced to the thought of Michael Polanyi through the guidance of William H. Poteat and his publications, what led to Cannon’s focus on the meaning and importance of the shift from the critical to the post-critical, and what that shift means.

Turkis: How did you come to study philosophy?

Cannon: I moved into philosophy in a curious kind of way. When I started at Seattle Pacific University in 1960, I was already on a trajectory of pursuing a degree in physics, spurred on by a great teacher in high school. But by the end of my first undergraduate year (1960–1961) I had taken a philosophy class with Jerry Gill, and by the end of my second year I had decided to change my career focus to philosophy, though I double-majored in physics to have a better acquaintance with what goes on in the practice of science itself. Even in those early days, I was struck by the fact that many philosophers of science seemed disconnected from actual scientific practice. Their idea of science wasn’t the science that I experienced in my physics classes and in the lab while assisting in the research of my physics professor. So at that stage, I was becoming aware that there was a serious disconnect between the theory and practice of science that needed clearing up philosophically. This disconnect was key to my later appreciation of Polanyi’s idea of a post-critical philosophy. It initiated in me a lifelong project of thinking through these things, though I was far from being able to articulate it in this way at the time.

I was later accepted into Duke University’s graduate program in Philosophy with a full-ride National Defense Education Act Fellowship because of my dual major in philosophy and physics. Duke’s program was dominated by analytic approaches. I found I was able to do what they taught reasonably well, but nobody was interested in exploring the big philosophical issues I most wanted to pursue. In some ways, Duke’s Philosophy Department in those years was an epitome of what I later recognized as the modern critical tradition.

Turkis: What led you to change your focus to religious studies?

Cannon: My first year there, I looked up William H. Poteat^1 on the recommendation of Jerry Gill. Poteat was a genuine philosopher in my judgment, but his professorship at Duke was in Religion. I had to take some courses outside the Department of Philosophy, so I decided to take his. And my, oh my! Intellectually I was in heaven. He seemed to be precisely the sort of teacher and mentor I had been looking for, so I decided to transfer to the Department of Religion to work with him, though this meant I wasn’t going to end up with a standard PhD. It was a fateful decision in many ways, but I believe it turned out to be the right one.

My first encounter with Michael Polanyi’s ideas came in a small seminar with Poteat in 1967. I was one of only two students in the course. We met in Poteat’s home and worked through Personal Knowledge. Poteat’s influence was key in guiding me toward Polanyi and other thinkers who deeply informed my approach to the post-critical shift.

Turkis: We will come back to Poteat, Polanyi, and the post-critical shift later. What came next for you?

Cannon: On the recommendation of Bill Poteat, I was hired at Skidmore College by Harry Prosch in 1968 while still working on my dissertation. I jumped at the opportunity. Doing this got me into some pretty deep water! In retrospect, I would say I was hired before I was really ready for teaching. The whole thing was very frightening to me, just jumping in to teach without any experience whatsoever.

Turkis: Prosch is a significant figure in Polanyi Studies. How well did you get to know him?

Cannon: Prosch was working with Polanyi in England most of the time during my first year of teaching at Skidmore College. And when he came back to Skidmore my second year there, we had relatively few conversations, so I did not get to know him well. He is a very good philosopher in his own right. I think he expected me to be more of a serious, traditional philosopher, fully versed in the history of thought. And I was very unseasoned. Prosch didn’t take to a Poteatian orientation at all. Not that he was an avowed enemy of Poteat’s or anything; he just couldn’t understand Poteat’s way of coming at things and was not disposed to take the time and effort to learn what it was about.

In 1970, I was offered a position in the relatively new Department of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia at Charlottesville. Accepting it turned out to be more fateful than I realized at the time. Until that point, I would say I was naïve when it came to the academic politics of tenure, which were quite rough there. Having a few brilliant students excited with my teaching did little to outweigh the relatively poor draw I was making with new students fresh to Religious Studies, and I had no training and little natural talent as to how to do the latter.

Turkis: Did you ever have the opportunity to interact personally with Polanyi?

Cannon: In 1972, I went to the Dayton Polanyi Conference, where I met Polanyi. Harry Prosch and Marjorie Grene were there, playing major roles. I didn’t have any one-on-one conversations with Polanyi, though I would have liked to. He wasn’t mixing a lot with people, as I recall, and when he did speak he did so from prepared notes, which was just as well, because when he spoke off the cuff you could tell he wasn’t quite able to extemporize anymore. He was far from top form. He still had four more years to go before he died, but it was pretty much downhill from there, and there were clear traces of dementia even in those days.

Turkis: How did you end up finishing your academic career at Western Oregon University?

Cannon: After three years in Virginia, my wife and I and our two oldest girls moved to the Pacific Northwest. Thus began a four-year interim in which I taught part-time, worked as a handyman, did some academic writing, and searched for an opening in philosophy. This is when it became clear that my PhD in Religion did not make me particularly attractive to institutions seeking to fill a tenure-track position in philosophy.

In 1977, I took a half-time position at Western Oregon State College (later renamed Western Oregon University) teaching philosophy and religious studies. That fall my wife and I and our two daughters moved to Monmouth, Oregon, where we have lived ever since. In 1980, I became a full-time, tenure-track Assistant Professor. Academic politics at Western, though challenging at times, were thankfully never hostile to the values I brought to bear on my teaching, my collegial relationships, or my research. It was and has been a good place to teach.

Turkis: You have written that your approach to philosophy and your understanding of Polanyi’s thought was much influenced by William Poteat. Say more about the nature of this influence.

Cannon: I studied with Poteat when he was at his height, dialectically and Socratically. I was learning how to read Polanyi in the way that Poteat read him, and that very much has stayed with me. Partly this involved working with the text in an actively empathetic manner—trying to grasp what Polanyi was seeking to articulate and not taking for granted that what he wrote was the last and final word on the subject—and Socratically drawing out my own responses to what we were reading. Just as important was Poteat’s personal presence, encouraging me and placing confidence in what I had to say.

Poteat would often bring other major thinkers into a convivial virtual conversation and use one to comment on the other. This was, among other things, a Poteatian counter to the abstract uniformalization and virtual solipsism characteristic of the modern academy’s mode of “critical thinking” that resulted in other points of view dropping out of the arena of discussion. That kind of interplay became for me a model for a post-critical, intellectual ethos: a kind of post-critical commonsense-making and a kind of post-critical public sphere (what Hannah Arendt called a “space of appearance” and what Polanyi speaks of as the convivial order of the scientific community). I was drawn to this model as well as to the kind of convivial conversations that were characteristic of Poteat’s graduate seminars. My own contention is that this conviviality (involving mutual accreditation and mutual confidence in what each member of the community has to contribute) is essential to a post-critical intellectual ethos, more than many persons have realized.

This conviviality, a central and crucial aspect of the post-critical intellectual ethos among Poteat’s students, came to characterize their interaction both in and out of classes. There were quite a few of us, and in order to continue and sustain the kinds of convivial intellectual conversations to which we had been introduced in Poteat’s classes, Jim Stines and I helped arrange summer gatherings in North and South Carolina for several years. One of the topics we discussed was posed by the novelist Walker Percy: “How to find the way out of the confusions of the Modern Age.” In addition, a recurrent question and puzzlement that we kept coming back to was, “What is this peculiar sort of reflection and intellectual inquiry (and teaching) that we are doing to which Poteat has introduced us?” Was it philosophy? What relationship did it have to religion? Was it “philosophical studies in religion and culture”? It was all of these and more. There was no simple answer we came to that summed it up, but nevertheless it seemed to have a kind of coherence and we seemed to be making a kind of progress in relation to it.

Poteat did not directly provide us with words for what it was. In some ways, I think, even he at times was not able fully to articulate it and at times seemed reluctant to talk about it since he feared that doing so might make it dissipate and disappear. Poteat attended a couple of these summer gatherings and seemed to enjoy them. Through them, he became one of us, as it were. Apparently, they provided an opportunity for convivial discussion that he did not have much of in his own life. It may be important to note that Poteat’s use of “post-critical” in the titles of his books, starting with Polanyian Meditations: In Search of a Post-Critical Logic (1985), did not occur until after these summer gatherings had ended.

Turkis: So the convivial philosophical discussions fostered by Poteat and centering on Polanyi’s work gave you something to work on throughout your intellectual journey.

Cannon: Yes. During my time with Poteat at Duke, the post-critical shift was becoming for me a kind of symbol of the academic quest I had undertaken. What is it, precisely? What is it all about? Nobody else under Poteat, before or since, was focused on explaining that, at least not as I was. I would say that for various reasons, perhaps, some have never really appropriated this centrally important aspect of Polanyi’s work. And it bears noting that early on in my studies, I did not even have the words that I now have to articulate the quest I was on. That came later when I was well into writing my dissertation.

Turkis: What was the topic of your dissertation?

Cannon: It took me a while to come up with a dissertation topic. The eventual title of my dissertation, “Mastered Irony: The Point of Entry into a Post-Critical Epistemology,” reflects a convergence of three lines of thought: (1) wrestling with what Polanyi was accomplishing (both intellectually and existentially) in writing what became Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Epistemology, viewed and considered in light of (2) the impact of encountering Kierkegaard’s writings (stemming from my first-semester course on Existentialism with Poteat in 1965) and reading Kierkegaard’s own academic dissertation, The Concept of Irony with Constant Reference to Socrates, and (3) the evocative intentional irony that pervaded Poteat’s Socratic teaching, which sensitized his students (and myself in particular) to the presence of irony in modern intellectual life and above all in the existential self-alienation constituting the critical mindset of modernity itself. Kierkegaard introduces the idea of “mastered irony” in the last chapter of his dissertation. Overcoming the existential self-alienation that characterized modern intellectual life—and thus a shift from the critical mindset to a post-critical mindset—required a mastery (and overcoming) of its irony, and Polanyi’s Personal Knowledge pointed the way. My dissertation (defended in June 1969) was my initial articulation of what it was all about, and I have never stopped working on it since. Near the time of my defense, I recall that Poteat told me it would take me a lifetime to unpack my dissertation and unfold its full meaning. Although the dissertation title focuses on epistemology, the dissertation is my first attempt to articulate what I take to be the root problem of modernity and how to move beyond it.

Turkis: Explain a bit more what you mean by what Polanyi was “wrestling with” in Personal Knowledge.

Cannon: Polanyi was a philosopher who was a scientist in the fullest sense of the word—one who is a practitioner of science from the ground up. His understanding of science was not that of an outsider, as was the case for many of those who developed Logical Positivism and related philosophical theories of science. Nor can Polanyi’s understanding be said to represent the critical mindset, which is an abstracted conceptualization of one’s life and practice. In Personal Knowledge, Polanyi is not just writing for his reader. He is writing for himself, and he is working through the shift from the critical mindset to the post-critical amid that writing. He makes a number of personal declarations, and they indicate an existential transformation that is taking place. It’s a transformation through which he remains the scientist he has been along with the rest of the scientific community in its largely tacit practice. Polanyi is explicitly owning up to himself as a scientist and a member of the scientific community and laying claim to the personal backing and intellectual passion he has given, and still gives [through his writing], to all of that—all in opposition to the predominant objectivist understandings that misrepresent what science is supposed to be about.

Because Polanyi himself was not focused on what is involved in such an existential transformation in general (as Poteat was), he seems at times almost oblivious to the full range of implications of the shift to the post-critical mindset or what would be involved in persons other than himself. There are a few confusions like this manifest in Personal Knowledge at times, and that’s part of the whole package. To undergo the shift, you work with where you are, coming to realize what you are as an embodied being in the world alongside other people and reaccrediting your trust in the particular history of practical learning, in the tacit skills, mentorship, and intellectual passions that have led you to that place. I think much of this is often missed by people reading and writing about Polanyi. What got you into intellectual life in the first place, and how has the modern mindset distanced and alienated you from it? Passion (the motivating force behind your personal participation in knowing) is a central part of it. That’s one of the things, by the way, that Kierkegaard has helped remind me of; his understanding of truth has passion at the heart of it, as does Polanyi’s. The need to return and own up to yourself reflects the depth of alienation from oneself that the critical mindset brings about and what the shift to the post-critical has to overcome.

The fact that Polanyi was not generally focused on the existential side of this transformation is one of the reasons why he doesn’t recognize other post-critical thinkers who aren’t Polanyians as well as Poteat was able to. Polanyi also seemed to have taken for granted Jean-Paul Sartre’s distorted conception of existentialism as a whole as something he had to distance himself from and reject. In consequence, Polanyi concludes that he has nothing in common with existentialists. In his first published reference to “post-critical” (LL, 109), Polanyi speaks of the shift to the post-critical as a significant intellectual movement in Europe to which he is calling his readers’ attention, not as a conceptual framework that he has constructed and is himself introducing. This is a broad reference to other people, other intellectuals, who have undergone or are undergoing the same existential transformation that he was undergoing. Poteat follows Polanyi in regarding post-critical thinking as a broad movement in intellectual culture, though Poteat’s work as a teacher and a writer, as we already discussed, was more consistent and explicit in acknowledging and bringing together, at least virtually, intellectuals (including many existentialists but not all) who think and write in a post-critical manner.

It is also important to recognize that Polanyi wasn’t entirely or consistently post-critical and wasn’t always able to notice his lapses when they happened.

Turkis: What is the end goal of navigating the post-critical shift?

Cannon: It’s a very powerful, life-changing experience to recover from the madness and disorientation of taking on the critical mindset as a result of coming to possess a modern mind. In important respects, it’s as if, in the modern mindset, you lose track of who you are as a person, and recovering from this loss is a matter of existentially recovering yourself. Poteat understood his own task as that of curing this insanity and returning us to ourselves, to who we are as a concrete, embodied person before God. This is not to suppose that it can be done straightforwardly or easily, least of all as a social program (see Cannon, 2008–2009). Poteat understood as well that helping a person undergo the shift and securing her place in the post-critical involves more than simply a change in that person’s thinking; it involves how that person relates herself to herself and to the world (personal and extra-personal) in which she lives. For many, it requires a space, a time, and a supporting community (and ethos) to make and sustain the shift.

In a series of published articles, I have sought to clarify and expound the shift from the critical paradigm in modern Western culture to the post-critical paradigm and to acknowledge its importance to Polanyi’s thought and its significance to intellectual culture at large. This shift was central to all that Poteat had to teach and write about Polanyi and to Poteat’s interpretation of other twentieth-century critics of modern Western culture (including here pre-twentieth-century figures such as Pascal and Kierkegaard). It has seemed to me that the shift has not been fully recognized or articulated among other Polanyi students/scholars. Being aware of this has motivated me to write about and expound upon it repeatedly (see Cannon 1981, 1992–1993, 1994–1995, 2008–2009, 2016, and 2021).

Turkis: Discuss how you came to apply “post-critical thought” to Religious Studies.

Cannon: When I made the transition in graduate school from a department of philosophy to a department of religion under Poteat, I had to take courses and study for preliminary exams in other areas such as comparative religion, philosophical theology, and systematic theology. Getting involved in all those areas, especially the first, changed the trajectory of my teaching career in important respects. For instance, in my first job, half of my teaching load was comparative study of religion, and I have taught comparative study of religion virtually every subsequent year of my teaching career. Every position I have had since then involved teaching religious studies. Until that first job assignment, religious studies had never been a part of my career vision. But it eventually led me to write my book, Six Ways of Being Religious: A Framework for Comparative Studies of Religion (now available for free using the link in the References section of the article). That book is the result of my philosophically inquiring into the nature of religious studies and developing what I believe is a sound theory about it. I did not realize until much later how much it, and the methodology as I employed, taught, and advocated it, reflected a distinctly Polanyian and post-critical orientation. What most led me to that realization was an exchange that took place in the Polanyi Society Meetings in 2011 and 2012.

I invited Jacob Sherman of the Institute for Integral Studies in San Francisco to make a presentation to the Polanyi Society. Jacob Sherman is going to make quite a name for himself. He was one of the co-authors of a collection called The Participatory Turn that reflected the way a number of people in religious studies are shifting toward an approach with much more involvement on the part of the investigator in the religious tradition under examination, a self-conscious personal participation very close to the way Polanyi talks about the personal participation of the knower in all forms of inquiry. I talked with Sherman initially to see if he agreed with my initial impression and if he would be interested in coming to a Society Meeting and talking about the relationship of this participatory turn to Polanyi’s ideas. He thought the proposal intriguing. He presented a paper on the subject and I responded. These have yet to be published in Tradition and Discovery, mainly hanging on my tackling the job of editing them.

And then the following year, on Sherman’s encouragement and in further response to his presentation, I wrote a paper on what would be a Polanyian approach to a comparative study of religion. This occasion led me to realize that my book, Six Ways of Being Religious, was itself an answer to that question, much more than I realized at the time of writing the book. It also led me to realize that the pedagogy I had developed in teaching comparative study of religion—namely, teaching my students how to explore (in a highly disciplined yet empathetic way) alternative systems of symbols and to describe what they thereby discovered—was an implementation of what Polanyi meant by tacit indwelling. In turn, Sherman composed and gave a positive response to my paper. So between Sherman and myself, we’ve got four papers that are yet to be published on a Polanyian approach to religious studies, and it is likely that they will be published at some point in TAD in the near future.

My work in comparative religion is one way in which my trajectory has built upon yet also moved beyond the legacies of Polanyi and Poteat. Few of Poteat’s students, for instance, went in that direction, with the important exception of Milton Scarborough (2009).

Turkis: Describe your interest in Philosophy for Children.

Cannon: Another movement I became interested in late in my career was a program called Philosophy for Children, developed by Matthew Lipman in New Jersey. He was formerly a professor at Columbia University. Lipman’s approach is now only one among several others around the world, all using the general rubric of “philosophy with children.” I got involved around 1990 and went to two seminars where I was able to work with Lipman as well as with children learning philosophy. It has affected my understanding of what it is to do philosophy by giving me a sense that anybody can be involved in philosophical thinking in a way that can be of value to them. In turn, I think it has made me able to communicate much more effectively about philosophical matters with ordinary people. I believe that this has to do with what I have called Polanyi’s recovery of “commonsense” and “a commonsense perspective” in intellectual life (1992–1993). I came to realize this with the help of Hannah Arendt’s account of “the loss of commonsense” in the modern world. I was introduced to her writings (especially The Human Condition) in one of Poteat’s seminars.

Turkis: What place has the post-critical shift had in your teaching?

Cannon: There are lots of ways in which the shift from a critical to a post-critical mindset has manifested in my teaching and publishing, and I have at times deliberately sought to have it be manifest, even in unforeseen places. It never was for me a program unto itself such as, let’s say, the title of a course or a program of studies. Yet it became an integral part of what I sought overall to accomplish in my teaching in whatever subject area I happened to be working.

Sometimes I took it as a deliberate focus to be clearly understood by my students, and it was rewarding when I did. Yet for the most part it was something tacitly at work in whatever area I worked in. Part of that was also because the need for content coverage in a small department required that I teach all sorts of courses that I otherwise wouldn’t teach. One example was the logic courses I taught every so often. I skewed that a bit so it became a course in development and refinement of reasoning skills rather than logic understood as only formal logic. As I came to characterize the taxonomy involved, I taught that there are formal reasoning skills (which we know in formal logic and mathematics and computer coding), and there are also informal reasoning skills, and what that includes, I discovered, is a large area, particularly if you’ve been influenced as I have by Steven Toulmin et al. (1979). As soon as you’re talking about the concrete context of reasoning, you’re going to bring into play other things besides formal aspects—other people reasoning together with you with significantly different points of view, and how special warrants governing informal inferences become involved as contexts are shifted. I summarized this in a little essay that calls for reasoning in four dimensions. The four dimensions in my taxonomy are formal reasoning, informal reasoning, interpersonal reasoning—where we get multiple points of view interacting simultaneously—and philosophical reasoning—wherein we reason about the presuppositions underlying our thought and the conceptual tools with which we reason more generally. I tried to integrate that type of approach in important respects when I taught logic, so it was never just formal logic, and it helped my students understand where formal logic fits into the whole complex of human reasoning.

Turkis: What have you sought to do in working within the Polanyi Society and in your publishing in TAD?

Cannon: I joined the Polanyi Society in the mid-1970s and have played a part (by presenting papers, responding to papers, doing editorial work with papers submitted to TAD, planning annual meetings and conferences, and sitting on the governing board), at least when I could afford to participate in meetings. My travel budget at a smaller state university way out west in Oregon often limited the conferences in which I was able to participate. My purpose was manifold. First, I wanted to help cultivate a community of philosophical colleagues who could and would serve as a receptive and convivial space of appearance (to use Hannah Arendt’s phrase), which I did not really have in the conventional circles of philosophical scholarship (such as the American Philosophical Association). Second, I already had a strong disposition to develop my thinking and publish papers and articles on topics to which Poteat had introduced me, and the Polanyi Society was more receptive than any other academic group I was familiar with. Third, I came to have a strong interest in helping extend and develop existing and new lines of scholarship in Polanyi studies—less out of a historical interest than out of a heuristic interest in carrying forward Polanyi’s (and Poteat’s) insights (see three quite different but important examples in Cannon 1972, 1975, and 2002–2003). The last of these remains in my estimation one of the more significant constructive philosophical works I have done in Polanyi studies.

In some of my articles (1996–1997, 1999, 1999–2000, and 2002–2003), I have sought to render explicit the conception or theory of truth that I find implied in Polanyi’s work. I have to say, however, that I have not found other Polanyi scholars as receptive to my theory as I had hoped. Apart from these works, I also published, earlier and elsewhere, “An Existential Theory of Truth” (1996).

I have sought within the Polanyi Society to make William Poteat’s contributions better known and understood and to show their relevance beyond the relatively small group of his students. This has been inseparable for me from expounding upon and elucidating aspects of Polanyi’s thought, precisely because that sort of exposition and elucidation was a central part of Poteat’s own work. Both of these projects were called for, as I understood them, because Poteat’s work comes at topics from a radically different angle than is usual and because it is often a challenge to decipher. It needs persons who know it well to interpret and make it accessible for others who do not. I should mention in this connection my participation with Wally Mead and James Clement van Pelt in organizing and putting together the June 2014 conference at Yale University—“The Primacy of Persons: The Intellectual Legacy of William H. Poteat”—and the subsequent publication of Recovering the Personal: The Philosophical Anthropology of William H. Poteat, which I co-edited with Ron Hall (Lexington, 2016). This book is made up of selected papers from that conference. Most of the other papers from the conference have been published in several issues of Tradition and Discovery (XLII:1, XLII:4, and IXIV:1).

I have sought too to bring other thinkers whose work converged in many ways with Polanyi’s thought into Polanyi Society meetings and into the intellectual forum provided by TAD. One example among others was my invitation to Blythe Clinchy, one of the co-authors of Women’s Ways of Knowing, to make a presentation to the society’s Annual Meeting. I have also sought to bring in figures involved in the establishment of “critical realism” in contemporary sociology and philosophers working on what has been called the “extended mind” thesis. There are many other resonant figures and movements that I could name. Both Polanyi and Poteat have much to contribute to the larger intellectual public; we have hardly begun to plumb the connections.

Throughout my involvement with the Polanyi Society, I have sought to encourage younger scholars new to Polanyi by participating in workshops designed to help them understand his ideas, and I have helped to promote the idea of a Polanyi Reader that, thankfully, Walt Gulick was able to put together. I have participated in other less formal brainstorming sessions on enhancing the Polanyi Society website, discussing future ideas for the Annual Society Meetings and the occasional Polanyi Conference. Where possible, I intend to continue to do so. [Editor’s Note: Cannon has contributed to several Zoom meetings; see the Polanyi Society website for information.]

ENDNOTE

1For a good overview of William H. Poteat’s thought and its relation to Polanyi, see the Wikipedia article, “William H. Poteat,” to which Cannon has contributed most of the content: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_H._Poteat.

REFERENCES

Cannon, Dale. 1972. “Dwelling in the World through Language: A Conceptual Tool for the Comparative Phenomenological Analysis of Religions.” International Philosophical Quarterly 12, no. 1 (March): 19–42.

———. 1975. “Ruminations on the Claim of Inenarrability.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 43, no. 3 (September): 560–585.

———. 1981. “The ‘Primitive’/‘Civilized’ Opposition and the Modern Notion of Objectivity: A Linkage.” PRE/TEXT: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Rhetoric 2, nos. 1–2 (Spring–Fall): 141–171.

———. 1992–1993. “Toward the Recovery of Common Sense in a Post-Critical Intellectual Ethos.” Tradition and Discovery (hereafter TAD) 19, no. 1, 5–15.

———. 1994–1995. “Haven’t You Noticed that Modernity Is Bankrupt? Ruminations on the Teaching Career of William H. Poteat.” TAD 21, no. 1, 20–32.

———. 1996a. “An Existential Theory of Truth.” The Personalist Forum 12, no. 2 (Fall): 775–785.

———. 1996b. Six Ways of Being Religious: A Framework for the Comparative Study of Religions. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing.

———. 1996–1997. “Sanders’ Analytic Rebuttal to Polanyi’s Critics, with Some Musings on Polanyi’s Idea of Truth.” TAD 23, no. 3, 17–23.

———. 1999. “Polanyi’s ‘Invitation to Dogmatism’? A Response to Andy Sanders’ ‘Polanyian Puzzle.’” Polanyiana 8, nos. 1–2 (Winter): 39–46.

———. 1999–2000. “Some Aspects of Polanyi’s Version of Realism.” TAD 26, no. 3, 51–61.

———. 2002–2003. “Construing Polanyi’s Tacit Knowing as Knowing by Acquaintance Rather than Knowing by Representation: Some Implications.” TAD 29, no. 2, 26–43.

———. 2008–2009. “Polanyi’s Influence on Poteat’s Conceptualization of Modernity’s ‘Insanity’ and Its Cure.” TAD 35, no. 2, 23–30.

———. 2016. “Being Post-Critical.” In Recovering the Personal: The Philosophical Anthropology of William H. Poteat, edited by Dale W. Cannon and Ronald L. Hall. Blue Ridge Summit, PA: Lexington Books. 21–45.

———. 2021. “The Critical to Post-Critical Shift: What It Is and Why It’s Important.” Polanyiana 30, no. 1: 57–109.

———, and Mark Weinstein, 1993. “Reasoning Skills: An Overview.” In Thinking Children and Education, edited by Matthew Lipman. Dubuque, IA: Kendall/Hunt. 598–604. Also published in Analytic Teaching 6, no. 1 (1985): 9–12, and in Thinking: The Journal of Philosophy for Children 6, no. 1 (1985): 29–33.

Polanyi, Michael. 1951. Logic of Liberty. University of Chicago Press.

Scarborough, Milton. 2009. Comparative Theories of Nonduality: The Search for a Middle Way. New York and London: Continuum.

Toulmin, Stephen, with Richard Rieke and Allan Janik. 1979. An Introduction to Reasoning. New York: Macmillan.

REVIEW ESSAY

Susan Bredlau and Talia Welsh, eds. Normality, Abnormality, and Pathology in Merleau-Ponty. New York, NY: SUNY, 2022. 278 + ix. Hardcover ISBN 9781438486857, $95.00. Paperback ISBN 9781438486864, $32.95.

INTERSUBJECTIVE EXPERIENCE: COMMENTS ON NORMALITY, ABNORMALITY, AND PATHOLOGY IN MERLEAU-PONTY^1

Ellen Wells Bernal

Keywords: Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Michael Polanyi, Intersubjectivity, Susan Bredlau, Talia Welsh, Abnormality, Pathology, Adam Blair, Whitney Howell, James Rakoczi, Locked-In Syndrome, Joel Michael Reynolds, Critical Phenomenology, Disability Studies, Fiction and Phenomenology

ABSTRACT

This review essay treats several essays in the interesting new collection, Normality, Abnormality, and Pathology in Merleau-Ponty, edited by Susan Bredlau and Talia Welsh. I focus particularly on chapters that explore the ambiguous relationships between the embodied person and the intersubjective world. I also explore ways in which Michael Polanyi’s ideas might enrich the discussion.

Introduction

Normality, Abnormality, and Pathology in Merleau-Ponty (hereafter NAP, 2022) is a new collection of articles that seeks to extend Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s account of intersubjectivity to our understanding of normality, abnormality, and pathology. Merleau-Ponty (1908–1961) was an eminent philosopher who called attention to the incoherencies of modern accounts of perception. With inspiration from the earlier phenomenology of Edmund Husserl (1859–1938), he proposed an extensive philosophical reform that incorporated evidence from contemporary studies of neurology, Gestalt psychology, and many other fields (Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception [hereafter PP], 2012). Merleau-Ponty in his earlier works explored in depth the interconnections between embodiment and the social world, but he later observed that he had nonetheless overemphasized the standpoint of individual consciousness in perception. Therefore, his later works were intended to branch out from “the philosophy of ‘consciousness’” and bring these earlier conclusions to “ontological explication” (1968, 183). Scholars have noted remarkable similarities between the insights of Merleau-Ponty and those of Michael Polanyi (1891–1976). Polanyi explored incongruities between modern empiricist accounts of scientific discovery and his own firsthand experience as an accomplished scientist. His claim that all knowing has a tacit-explicit structure led him to a revised understanding of human achievement in science, religion, and art. For orientation purposes, this review article begins with a brief comparison of the two philosophers. I will then reflect on selected chapters in Bredlau and Welsh, primarily from the standpoint of Merleau-Ponty, but I will also explore several themes in Michael Polanyi that could be brought to bear on normality, abnormality, and pathology.

Merleau-Ponty and Michael Polanyi: Common Approaches

A detailed comparison of Merleau-Ponty and Polanyi is not practicable here, but an overview may help orient readers who are less familiar with one or the other. Both philosophers critique taken-for-granted accounts of how knowledge is achieved. They engage and extend insights from Gestalt psychology in their understanding of embodiment and intersubjectivity. Literature suggests that the two philosophers had no personal contact and only limited awareness of each other’s ideas. However, Marjorie Grene (1910–2009) noticed similarities and encouraged Polanyi to read Merleau-Ponty. When he finally followed her suggestion, Polanyi’s response was at times somewhat disparaging: “These remarks foreshadow my analysis, but I find among them neither the logic of tacit knowing nor the theory of ontological stratification” (Polanyi 1969, 222; Mullins 2022; Lowney 2010 and 2014). At other times, Polanyi “seems to have regarded Husserl’s ‘reduction’ and perhaps Merleau-Ponty’s ‘embodiment’ as philosophical moves on the way toward something like his theory of tacit knowing” (Mullins 2002, 26). Polanyi correctly observes that Merleau-Ponty did not outline a specific structure of knowing. But in my view, Merleau-Ponty’s description of the primordial body schema offers a subtler and perhaps more promising account of embodied being-in-the-world. These themes are explored in secondary literature (Mead 2008; Bernal 1980; Lowney and Verhage 2009; Mullins 2022).2

Conceptual Reform

Both philosophers discern the conceptual and existential problems resulting from the modern era’s pervasive yet unacknowledged assumptions about human knowing. They would agree that while science, and to a lesser extent intellectualist philosophy, have led Western man to an “unprecedented breadth of knowledge,” these viewpoints “simultaneously served—first subtly and later critically—to undermine the human being’s existential situation on virtually every front: metaphysical and cosmological, epistemological, psychological, and finally even biological” (Tarnas 1991, 325; see also Cannon 2021; Polanyi 1962). Merleau-Ponty named these false pictures “intellectualism” (the idealist pursuit of certain knowledge through universal doubt) and “empiricism” (the notion that scientific knowledge is achieved by the impersonal recording and association of sense-data). Likewise, Michael Polanyi called attention to the incongruity between “empiricist” or “positivist” accounts of the way scientific discovery occurs and his own lived experience as an accomplished scientist. Merleau-Ponty and Polanyi each attend to the discrepancies between these received accounts and the way that knowing actually takes place. In their critiques, both Merleau-Ponty and Polanyi draw supporting evidence from a range of scientific studies and, in particular, from Gestalt psychology research.

I note here that Gestalt psychology was itself a reaction against the era’s empiricist viewpoint, particularly against the “Reflex Arc” theory of perception. The Reflex Arc theory viewed the perceiving subject as a passive recipient of discrete sensations. In brief, the theory proposed a simple “circuit” between an “outside” stimulus, the impression of the stimulus in discrete areas of the brain, and the elicited response from the organism. The person’s context and own participation were trivial at best. The Reflex Arc theory never convincingly explained how the subject “associated” or drew meaning from disparate sensations. But because of the empiricist atmosphere of the era, neuropsychologists assumed that even higher-order experience and perception could be accounted for in this manner. As previously noted, both Merleau-Ponty and Polanyi rejected the empiricist view of perception, and they found research studies conducted from the Gestalt perspective to be particularly useful in their critiques and proposals for reform. Here I will primarily consider Merleau-Ponty’s special interest in the research conducted by Kurt Goldstein (1878–1965) and Adhémar Gelb (1887–1936).

Gestalt Psychology and Synesthesia

In their research, Gelb and Goldstein observed German army veterans who had sustained brain injuries in World War I. In an experimental format, the investigators studied the sequelae of the veterans’ injuries and observed the patients’ innovative, holistic responses to their situations. They recognized that their approach diverged from that of traditional neurology.

We have concerned ourselves less with what the patients could not do and have been guided more by a desire to learn how normal apprehension is modified by brain injury…. Our purpose has been to determine what was contained in the consciousness of these patients. As a result we have relied heavily upon naïve reports and descriptions as given by the patients themselves. (1997, 315)

The case of Johann Schneider, “described by Gelb and Goldstein in 1920…plays a crucial role in Merleau-Ponty’s own conception of embodiment, as he vividly describes in ‘The Spatiality of One’s Own Body and Motricity’” (Slatman 2022, 22; PP, 100–148). If Reflex Arc theory were correct, Schneider’s actions would be discrete and linked to the specific locations of brain injuries. Instead, Gelb and Goldstein observed that Schneider had an overall deficit in abstract thinking (Goldstein 2000). For example, while Schneider had remarkable difficulty complying with an abstract request to touch his nose, he could easily do so if he felt the concrete need to use a handkerchief (PP, 105). Also, even though Schneider was physically capable of sexual response, he did not seek out sexual relationships. Schneider’s injuries apparently affected his entire being; nevertheless, he was able to develop adaptations through various strategies, one of which was to imagine himself in a concrete situation (Bredlau and Welsh, 6).

In life, he [Schneider] says, “I experience movement as a result of the situation, as the sequence of events themselves; my movement and I, we are, so to speak, merely a link in the unfolding of the whole, and I am scarcely aware of any voluntary initiative…everything works by itself.” Similarly, in order to execute a movement upon command, he places himself “within the affective situation of the whole, and the movement flows from this whole, just as in life.” (PP, 135)

Partly based on these observations, Merleau-Ponty supports his proposal that people have an “intentional arc,” a primordial orientation towards meaning and intersubjectivity in the world. An injury such as Schneider’s may slacken but will not destroy this intentional arc (Bredlau and Welsh 2022, 6). “Our consciousness, says Merleau-Ponty, is not first of all an ‘I think,’ as Descartes and Kant said, but an ‘I can’ (je peux)” (Slatham, in NAP, 24; PP, 171).

In a similar fashion, the insights of Gestalt psychology undergird Polanyi’s radical approach to personal knowing. He asserted that the full range of human achievement (comprising, for example, physical performances, language, and abstract thought) is based on the integration of tacitly known particulars into a comprehensive whole; knowledge is an extension of our bodies. For both philosophers, then, our embodiment and situatedness are not hindrances to knowing, as both empiricism and intellectualism presume; instead, they are the ground of any knowledge whatsoever. This ground includes a synesthetic unity of the senses. For example, Merleau-Ponty described vision as a remarkable variant of touch: “The look, we said, envelopes, palpates, espouses the visible things…as though it were in a relation of pre-established harmony with them” (1968, 133).

Given Gestalt psychology’s holistic description of the embodied person, and Schneider’s evident ability to express himself, it is curious to this writer that Merleau-Ponty did not offer extended accounts of Schneider’s self-perception. I wonder how Schneider viewed his participation in research studies over the years. How did he experience his interaction with the researchers? Did he have friends or family members? How did he get along on a daily basis? It would have been interesting for Merleau-Ponty to explore these questions with Schneider, but overall, Merleau-Ponty’s descriptions of normality, abnormality, and pathology, while undoubtedly rich, are from a third-person perspective.

However, first-person accounts are a significant focus in the Bredlau and Welsh volume, as I will discuss. In my treatment of several chapters, I will also briefly note other themes familiar from our general overview of Merleau-Ponty and Polanyi. These include a critique of intellectualist and empiricist descriptions of knowing; an endorsement of the intentional arc; and an exploration of the meaning of sensory perception, lived space, and intersubjectivity.

Bredlau and Welsh: On Intersubjectivity

Part I of Bredlau and Welsh’s new collection of essays has primarily a theoretical focus. In this short review, I shall focus only on some chapters selected from Part II, “Practical Phenomenological Applications of Merleau-Ponty’s Theories of Normality, Abnormality, and Pathology.” I consider the strategies that the authors use to extend Merleau-Ponty’s insights, in particular the ways that first-person descriptions of abnormality (life-writing) and fictional accounts can enrich these approaches.

The chapters in Part II explore the themes of intersubjectivity and abnormality. The essays share certain concerns that are voiced from the perspective of “Critical Phenomenology.” As Magri and MacQueen explain in Critical Phenomenology: An Introduction, this new framework explores the social ambiguities experienced by those who self-describe or are described by others as “abnormal” or “deviant.” “Classic phenomenology,” represented by Merleau-Ponty, already had a strong emphasis on reflection; critical phenomenology applies this approach to the tangled relationships “between embodied experience, social identity, and power relations…thus [it] seeks to better identify the context-dependent character of first-person experience” (2023, 3). Critical phenomenology acknowledges that the body is the horizon that makes experience possible, but “it is also the site through which social identifies are made visible” (3). This perspective invokes the subtle interweaving of person and world, unlike sociological research that assumes a simple “causality” between social structures and the individual. Another distinction is that critical phenomenology seeks to transform, not merely describe, the social structures that create unfair practices (44). This intention is more implied than explicitly discussed in the Bredlau and Welsh collection, but it could be drawn out in future explorations.

Selected Chapters in Bredlau and Welsh

The chapters that I will treat are distinguished by their attention to first-person and fictional narratives (NAP, Part II). As previously noted, Merleau-Ponty most often discusses normality and abnormality from the perspective of an observer; the chapters I have selected both supplement and interrogate Merleau-Ponty’s more objective style. For example, Adam Blair’s essay, “Meandering Peripheries: A Ground without Figure for Relief” (NAP, 119–139), questions whether his left eye’s ambiguous visual field complicates Merleau-Ponty’s account of Gestalt formation.

Blair was born with morning glory syndrome in his left eye. The underdeveloped optic nerve causes a vague, dream-like visual field that seems incapable of forming a complete Gestalt.3 To what extent does this atypical visual style interrogate Merleau-Ponty’s view of perception? Blair worries that Merleau-Ponty excludes from consideration perceptions that by their very nature are vague and unclear. This is an interesting idea worth pursuing, but, on the other hand, Merleau-Ponty does affirm the existence of some ambiguous experience.4 He remarks that Cézanne “wanted to depict matter as it takes on form, the birth of order through spontaneous organization.” The lived perspective cannot be reduced to geometry or simple photography (Merleau-Ponty 1964a, 13–14; see also Cashell 2016). For that matter, even Merleau-Ponty’s dialectical argument gradually reveals a more ambiguous account of perception. Blair may be correct, however, that indeterminate phenomena need more attention in Merleau-Ponty.5

The Insight of Dispossession

While Blair’s discussion considers Merleau-Ponty’s writings on vision, Whitney Howell extends the philosopher’s consideration of lived spatiality in “The Insight of Dispossession: Examining the Phenomenological and Political Significance of Merleau-Ponty’s Account of the Spatial Level” (2022, NAP, 141–164). I will trace the general lines of her argument and then raise questions based on Merleau-Ponty’s writings on Gestalt formation and the intentional arc.

Howell’s discussion takes as its starting point Merleau-Ponty’s chapter, “Space,” and in particular his attention to psychological studies of abnormal perception (Howell, NAP, 141–142; PP, 311). One study observes a research participant’s response to wearing goggles that cause an inverted perception of the environment and of his own body. The subject is gradually able to “right himself.” “From the third day to the seventh day, the body is progressively brought upright and appears to be finally in the normal position, above all when the subject is active…. External objects increasingly have an appearance of ‘reality’” (Howell, NAP, 143; PP, 255). In another study, a participant is asked to look at a mirror image that makes a room appear to be slanted. In this case, the subject needs only a few hours to regain a “normal” perception (151–152; PP, 260–261).

In both experimental situations, the subject is at first confronted by the incongruity between his visual field and his taken-for-granted body schema (PP, 255–256). Merleau-Ponty considers this ambiguity as further evidence of the deficiencies of both intellectualism and empiricism. In brief, the philosopher’s position is that while the subject intellectually “knows” that his vision is artificially altered, this awareness does not by itself bring back a sense of normal orientation. By the same token, although one could argue that the “stimuli” issuing from the experimental environment have not changed, the research participant perceives them differently and must, over time, reorient his body and reframe his perception. Once the subject achieves the newly constructed body schema, he can rely on it without explicit focus for the duration of the experiment.6

Howell claims that the taken-for-granted constructs revealed by the experiments on abnormal vision are also present in our everyday lives. We experience the comforting spaces of our homes and regular places of employment and renewal (PP, 131). We “possess” these spaces as welcoming entities and an inviting theatre for our actions; there is an implicit pact between ourselves and the world (Howell, NAP, 145; PP, 261; Russon 2022). Howell then points out some of the many experiences that cause a sense of what she terms “dispossession.” When we visit a new city or set ourselves the task of learning a new skill such as dancing, our situation will closely resemble that of the experimental subjects we have just discussed. We will need time to embody the newly encountered space (PP, 294; Howell, NAP, 148).7 For Howell, these circumstances reveal that every act of perception has a hidden basis of already established knowledge and, more importantly for her argument, that every act of perception is at the same time an act of forgetting that closes off other dimensions of experience.

Howell’s idea of possession and dispossession, seeing and failing to see, is echoed in an intriguing novel, The City and the City (Miéville, 2006).8 Two fictional cities, Besźel and Ul Qoma, share the same boundaries and occupy the same space but have diverging role expectations, traditions, and languages. The residents must maintain a strict separation between the two cities or face sanctions from a mysterious organization known as “Breach.”9 This requirement is complicated by the fact that from an objective point of view, many streets and spaces are adjacent or even intersecting, that is, they are “grosstopically” congruent. When this is the case, residents of the two different cities must deliberately “unsee” or “unhear” one another. For Howell, these maneuvers call to mind “the extent to which our possession of space always entails exclusions, even as it activates our capacities in a particular environment…. Once we have established particular modes of interaction within the spatial level, other possibilities retreat below our awareness” (150). Howell suggests that this forgetting can lead to a failure to recognize others’ perspectives and the social injustice that they may experience. She suggests that we need to be “dispossessed” of our taken-for-granted beliefs in order to gain a broader awareness of social inequities such as gerrymandering, redlining, and situating industrial plants and expressways near underserved neighborhoods.

Howell’s claims are innovative and intriguing, in no small part because she bases them not on Merleau-Ponty’s writings on intersubjectivity and politics but rather on his description of lived spatiality. I think, though, that several areas would benefit from a broader consideration of Merleau-Ponty’s ideas.

First, as we have seen, Merleau-Ponty (and Polanyi) base their epistemologies, in part, on certain findings of Gestalt psychology. The philosophers each affirm that all knowing is the achievement of the embodied person. The person relies on previously established, tacitly held knowledge to form new understandings and discoveries; this creative process underlies all knowing. The philosophers, of course, greatly elaborate on this key insight throughout their many works. One noteworthy instance is Merleau-Ponty’s “intentional arc,” which, as we have previously discussed, is always present and active, even in situations of bodily injury.

I think it would be helpful for Howell to give greater consideration to the positive, creative aspects of intentionality. To this writer, the negative connotations of “dispossession,” such as “deprivation,” “disinheritance,” and “seizure of property,” tend to imply that already familiar constructs are often misguided and highly resistant to change. I suggest that more neutral terms such as “reframing” or “reconsideration” would better encompass Merleau-Ponty’s framework, in particular his first encounter with Paris, when he finds himself developing a lived space of the city. (See Howell, NAP, 144; PP, 294). Merleau-Ponty does not describe a “dispossession” or “foreclosure” of previously established spatiality; in fact, these prior learnings provide important clues for creating a new sense of familiarity. So, for Merleau-Ponty, preestablished frameworks are flexible and the source of our knowing, and as a rule they do not lead to “forgetting” other possibilities.

I also suggest that Howell might further elaborate on the role of the embodied person in reframing perception. As Tarnas observes, we have a tendency in modernity to posit seemingly objective models to explain personal and social processes (1991, 325–332). While abstractions such as these provide useful analytical maps, they tend to exclude consideration of the person who is actively engaged in perception and knowing. As we have discussed, the conceptual reforms of both Merleau-Ponty and Polanyi are concerted efforts to address and overcome this problem.

In contrast to descriptive models, in actual life the revision of a cultural ethos is complex and ambiguous, requiring personal reflection on events. For example, Merleau-Ponty’s article on World War II has a meditative, almost journalistic style that allows us to grasp one interpretation of history. “The War Has Taken Place” was published in the first issue of Les Temps Modernes (Merleau-Ponty 1964c). The essay looks back to 1939 and 1940, when Nazi forces invaded Poland and began their occupation of France. Merleau-Ponty calls attention to the way intellectuals’ taken-for-granted assumption that there was a common thread of humanism throughout Europe, including the universal ideals of fairness and personal freedom and the assumption that intellectual argument could resolve conflict, at first led to a “failure to see” the meaning of the occupation. Only gradually did scholars come to understand that their system of belief was not universal after all; it was contingent on the particular time and place of pre-war Europe and France. They witnessed cruelty daily, including mass deportations of adults and children to concentration camps. France had become a police state, and intellectuals were forced into difficult choices about collaboration and resistance. Merleau-Ponty’s essay describes these events in all their temporality and ambiguity. In my opinion, details and perspectives such as these are required if we are to understand the course of history. Still, Howell’s essay is a creative and successful elaboration of Merleau-Ponty’s account of lived spatiality.

Moving without Movement

James Rakoczi’s chapter in this new collection has a long and at first confusing title, “Moving without Movement: Merleau-Ponty’s ‘I can’ and the Memoirs of Bodily Immobility” (NAP, 165–185). Rakoczi explores the complexities faced by people with locked-in syndrome (LiS), a state in which the “patient experiences near-total motor paralysis but retains full cognitive ability” (Rakoczi, 165). Rakoczi’s chapter critiques second-order accounts of LiS and wonders whether Merleau-Ponty overemphasizes the place of movement in his description of being-in-the-world.

The taken for granted assumption that movement is the signal aspect of being alive, complicates both our ordinary standpoint and many of Merleau-Ponty’s assumptions about movement. Merleau-Ponty’s project…helped instantiate a conceptualization of bodily integrity that both aids a harmful occlusion of the immobile body and makes certain kinds of theoretical thinking about bodies that cannot move heuristically impossible. (Rakoczi, 165)

Rakoczi begins to explore this incongruity by characterizing research and scholarship surrounding LiS. In general, these accounts have taken one of two different approaches. First, there is quasi-empirical research that seeks to describe what the experience of being locked in is like, often associated with a call for interventions to improve the quality of life. Second, there is philosophical and theoretical research that attempts to derive an understanding of “the normal” from the abnormal.10 These accounts are informed by an underlying dualism that leads to an abstract philosophical debate about whether people with LiS continue to have a coherent sense of self. Philosophical and fictional accounts worry about the problem of “the continuity of personal identity” when one has an immobile body (Rakoczi, 167–168).

These narratives reduce the situation of a person with LiS to a “mind” within a useless “body,” or even a “living death.” However, first-person accounts, Rakoczi claims, can lead to a different understanding. Dominique Bauby was an accomplished French journalist who suffered a massive stroke that resulted in complete loss of bodily movement, except for an ability to blink his left eyelid. Bauby used this residual ability to “dictate” an entire book to a scribe, obviously a lengthy and complex process. He would painstakingly rehearse, edit, and revise what he wanted to express in preparation for the arrival of his assistant.

My main task now is to compose the first of these bedridden travel notes so that I shall be ready when my publisher’s emissary arrives to take my dictation, letter by letter. In my head I churn over every sentence ten times, delete a word, add an adjective, and learn my text by heart, paragraph by paragraph. (Bauby 1997, 13)

The fact that Bauby’s creative process is interrupted when a nurse enters his room shows that his “intentional arc” is still present, despite his physical limitations.

Rakoczi contends that Merleau-Ponty’s description of motility, though promising, needs major revision. His concern is Merleau-Ponty’s claim, “A system of possible movements, or ‘motor projects’ radiates from us to our environment…. Even our most secret affective movements…help to shape our perception of things” (Rakoczi, 173; PP, 5). If phenomenology’s description of being-in-the-world assumes human motion, how should we understand the lived experience of LiS? Rakoczi’s solution is to extend Merleau-Ponty’s notion of the “I Can” to the movement that these individuals themselves envision. Descriptions of imagined movement and writing need to avoid the Cartesian framework: people with LiS do not have a disincarnate mind; they continue to rely on their body schema, which is for the most part not active, but there is a primordial framework that continues to embody this person’s life. Even though there is a loss of bodily possibility, the “global, practical” grounding of this notion does not go away (Rakoczi, 172).

Bauby’s language supports Rakoczi’s approach: “My mind takes flight like a butterfly. There is so much to do. You can wander off in space or in time, set out for Tierra del Fuego or for King Midas’s court” (Bauby 1997, 16; Rakoczi, 172). This is an analogous situation to ones in which patients create narratives to explain away loss of function (Rakoczi, 173). Despite injury and immobility, some people maintain a sense of intentionality. Others are less successful. One sufferer with advancing LiS said that he lost his will to move as his paralysis progressed. Another person experienced distortions of space and intersubjectivity, perceiving others as taller and more powerful than usual (Rakoczi, 168–169).

Rakoczi’s conclusion that immobility narratives are not a “representation of sick bodies (an ‘I think’) but a therapeutics of sick bodies (an ‘I can’)” is well supported by his examples and argument (176). I think, however, that Merleau-Ponty’s grounding of intentionality in movement is not as thoroughgoing or problematic as Rakoczi takes it to be. Merleau-Ponty consistently offers a nuanced and complex description of being-in-the-world, which overall (with some exceptions) rejects the notion of a disembodied, universalizing mind.

Richard Gelwick’s review of another LiS narrative, Locked Into Life, draws similar conclusions from a Polanyian perspective (Gelwick 2003; Howell and Hall 2002). James Hall, a Jungian psychiatrist, was en route to present a paper at a Polanyi conference when he suffered a severe stroke. He survived the incident and entered a locked-in state. Although physicians concluded that Hall had no cognitive ability, the patience and determination of his colleagues revealed that Hall was still present and could communicate with a spelling board. Hall was then able to achieve an “independence of mind…thinking and generating freshly from the physical, cultural, professional, and spiritual background of his life” (Gelwick 2003, 37–38). This account of LiS reinforces the Polanyian notion that the mind is always embodied and is “not reducible to its material parts” (Gelwick, 37).

Health and Other Reveries

Individuals and families who have access to medical technology face new and difficult choices. Joel Michael Reynold’s essay, “Health and Other Reveries: Homo Curare, Homo Faber, and the Realization of Care,” explores the haunting existential choices confronting parents when their children are suspected of having genetic anomalies (NAP, 203–224). Should they agree to genomic screening (GSTx)? Reynolds suggests that such questions introduce a deep and troubling incongruity into parents’ self-understanding: a differentiation between “the human understood as a controller of fate through the creation and use of tools (homo faber)” and “the human understood as conspiring with fate through the guidance and practice of care (homo curare)” (Reynolds, NAP, 205). Conflict between these two roles is a familiar theme in philosophy and ethics, even traceable to the distinction between God as Creator vs. Artificer. Kant’s imperative (i.e., that one should act so as to treat humanity, whether in your own person or in that of another, at all times also as an end and not only as a means) is another example. The distinction is brought forward to the context of research bioethics. Approval from the Institutional Review Board requires an informed consent process that carefully differentiates the role of the research physician, which is by and large instrumental, from that of an attending physician.

The pseudo consent forms that Reynolds imagines in his chapter, such as “Would You Like to Know When Your Child Will Die?” are a startling contrast to the usual informative but bland consent forms in actual research (Reynolds, 206). Reynolds points out that even if parents do decide to opt in, the information gained from the testing is likely to be ambiguous, complicating both medical decisions and everyday family life. The uncertainty can influence a parent’s perception of the child, as one mother relates:

I’m constantly questioning “is this because of her disorder?” For example, she’s a really bad sleeper so for the longest time I thought “wow, is this her deletion or is it just that she’s five months old and she sucks at sleeping like most babies?” (Reynolds, 209)

In addition to confusion about their role, parents with sick children often experience the pervasive disorientation of despair alternating with hope.

Reynolds’s description of the tension between instrumental and holistic relationships is further imagined in another recent novel, Never Let Me Go (Ishiguro, 2005), which begins as the main character, Kathy H., recalls her peaceful, enriching years at “Hailsham,” a boarding school in England. But her language is strange. She is a “carer” for organ donors, and the teachers at Hailsham are known as “guardians.” We gradually come to understand (as do the children) that the school is an institution where cloned individuals are raised from childhood to young adulthood. As adults, the “graduates” will first spend several years as carers of organ donors, then become organ donors themselves. The carer does not seek to bring patients back to their optimal state of health; their purpose is merely instrumental: to return “donors” to a sufficient state of survival to facilitate subsequent donations. Donation is not a voluntary or singular act, motivated by altruism. First, second, third, and (rarely) fourth donations are in the future and will ultimately end in “completion.”

The narrative describes many tragic situations that emphasize the inevitable trajectories of the graduates’ existence. The adult Kathy (still a carer) and her companions, Tommy and Ruth, are intrigued by stories of a nearby boat, and they decide to take a trip to see it for themselves. They find the location but have to approach the boat slowly, since Tommy and Ruth have already reached the donor stage and their health and mobility are severely compromised. They see that the boat is stranded, echoing the futility of their own lives. Even a humble career in the wider society is out of reach. At another point, the friends hear about a woman in the city who resembles Ruth, suggesting that Ruth’s “possible” (i.e., person from whom she is cloned) might be nearby. They mount a trip to the city, but this search is also disappointing and inconclusive. A rumor about a special process that temporarily delays organ donation raises hope but proves to be false. The graduates’ lives serve only as “spare parts” for those who are more privileged.11

The fictional world of Never Let Me Go, by negative example, reveals the characteristics of a healthy convivial order. For Merleau-Ponty, intersubjectivity is the primordial ground of being in the world.12 Both Merleau-Ponty and Polanyi affirm the importance of personal freedom that is situated in a rich and eclectic cultural tradition (for Polanyi, it was a community of scientists). In this world, people are centers of value in themselves, and innovation is encouraged and celebrated. I think that the frameworks of Merleau-Ponty and Polanyi offer a firm ground for critiquing and transforming the “reveries” that, for Reynolds, complicate parent-child relationships in the context of genetic technologies. These concepts would be useful, for example, in educational programs for genetic counsellors.

Future Directions

There are many promising avenues for future studies of matters introduced in the essays in Bredlau and Welsh. Here, I highlight seven.

Disability Studies

Both literature and activism in this field have grown in volume and complexity since the 1990 passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) (Simon 2013). It would be interesting to engage life-writing accounts and theoretical perspectives from the standpoint of Disability Studies. Specifically, are the perspectives in Bredlau and Welsh reasonably congruent with the views of those who identify themselves as disabled?

Critical Phenomenology

Critical phenomenology seeks not only to describe but also to ameliorate social conditions that perpetuate injustice. Are there initiatives and developments that have led to change in the areas of concern raised by Magrì and McQueen (2023)?

The primary focus of Bredlau and Welsh, and of the present article, is the philosophy of Merleau-Ponty. As we have observed, Michael Polanyi describes similar concerns and proposals. What can we say or infer about his views on normality, abnormality, and pathology? Polanyi’s focus on the structures of knowing and epistemology, rather than on embodiment, raises interesting challenges.

The Possibility of Error

Polanyi’s general project is to reform faulty, scientistic descriptions of how knowledge is achieved by affirming the essential participation of the knower in all acts of discovery. Polanyi also recognizes that personal knowing implies the confirmation of beliefs that might conceivably be false. Thus, he is interested in the ways that scientific understanding develops over time, even though error and misapprehension can occur. Could this insight help us understand how views of abnormality have developed over time and how they might be revised? (See Venable, 2022.)

Errors in Inference

Reasonable action and perception, according to Polanyi, can be classified in the following manner.

(a) Correct inferences reached within a true system.

(b) Erroneous conclusions arrived at within a true system.

(c) Conclusions arrived at by the correct use of a fallacious system.

(d) Incoherence and Obsessiveness as observed in the ideation of the insane, particularly in schizophrenia (Polanyi 1962, 374). This classification system focuses on mistakes in knowing; as such, its application to problems in physicality is unclear. However, failures in inference could be brought to bear on accounts and social perceptions of abnormality.

Physiological “Mistakes”

Polanyi does not have Merleau-Ponty’s intense focus on people with medical conditions such as brain damage, phantom limb sensations, or aphasia. He offers few descriptions of the ways that people experience or manifest physical abnormalities. However, he has considered how machine-like structures can lead to error. He proposes that human life depends on successive levels of boundary conditions. Physics and chemistry provide the basis for physiology, which in turn leads to integrated human function and perhaps to transcendence. Failure in an integrated function, such as vision, can only be understood by reference to the preceding level, which in this case would be physiology. This analysis is especially helpful in categorizing functional breakdowns, such as morning glory syndrome and locked-in syndrome, but does not give access to the experience of these conditions.

Child Development

Merleau-Ponty devotes sustained attention to the origins of intentionality in childhood (Trevarthen 1975; Merleau-Ponty 1964b). Polanyi’s remarks are less focused. He holds that intellectual artifacts are transmitted through apprenticeship. A child places confidence in his parents, school, and eventually in the larger society (Polanyi 1962, 207). How might Polanyi’s ideas be extended into an account of unhealthy childhood environments that can lead to personal or social disturbances? For example, could one draw analogies between Polanyi’s discussion of totalitarian states and the workings of family systems?

Abnormal Social Structures, Political Corruption, and Totalitarianism

Polanyi’s chapter, “Conviviality,” discusses the foundations of a “community of knowers” and the ways that corrupt political systems can exploit our intellectual and moral passions (1962, 203–245). He is especially concerned about Soviet manipulation of science for political ends. Dynamo-objective coupling, as in Marxism, is also a major problem. Perhaps Polanyi’s insights on conviviality could be brought to bear on the issues we have discussed in Bredlau and Welsh, such as unfair treatment and labelling of people with disabilities (Howell, Rakoczi), exploitation of some people for the benefit of others, and the unfortunate tendency in medical care to overlook the personal meaning of illness and treatment (Reynolds).

Conclusion

Normality, Abnormality, and Pathology in Merleau-Ponty is a creative and intriguing compilation of essays that explore, extend, and critique Merleau-Ponty’s writings. The chapters take many different approaches, ranging from philosophical analysis to life-writing and fiction. The volume represents an excellent contribution to Merleau-Ponty studies and would be a fine addition to professional education, including social work, Disability Studies, nursing, psychology, and medicine. The theoretical chapters would also be of interest in philosophy seminars.

ENDNOTES

1Many thanks to Phil Mullins and Martin Turkis for their assistance with this paper.

2See also the websites of The International Merleau-Ponty Circle, https://www.merleauponty.org, and The Polanyi Society, http://polanyisociety.org.

3Polanyi would consider Blair’s underdeveloped optic nerve as a functional error at the physiological level of organization. “Physiology is the technology of healthy achievements: of wholesome feeding, good digestion, effective locomotion, sharp perception, fertile copulation, etc.” (Polanyi 1962, 334).

4I suggest that Blair’s critique would be more applicable to Polanyi’s description of the structure of knowing, which seems to assume clear resolution.

5For example, jazz and other musical pieces that deliberately incorporate improvisation are distinct from traditional Western styles that have a taken-for-granted structure of chordal tension and resolution. Contemporary musical performance and ambient music may feature “slow, diffuse melodic lines with no recognizable tempo” (Pawuk 2022).

6Polanyi also considers experiments with inversion goggles, and his conclusions about the tacitly held body schema are congruent with those of Merleau-Ponty.

7Likewise, David Abram writes that when his family is away, he begins to experience the “neutral” spaces of his house as unfamiliar and disturbing (2010, 31).

8Both Merleau-Ponty and Simone de Beauvoir affirm that fictional accounts offer situated, concrete perspectives that contrast to traditional philosophy’s “masculinizing and universalizing” tendencies. (See Merleau-Ponty 1964b; Poteat 1993; Fullbrook and Fullbrook 1998).

9The City and the City does not provide a historical basis for the separation.

10We have previously discussed this methodology in Merleau-Ponty, and it is a major focus of the present volume.

11It is no wonder that the children are raised by guardians in an institution; their parents are not in evidence. The novel does not describe the “gestational” period; perhaps surrogates are involved. The lives and intersubjectivity of the children are compromised from the beginning.

12“A fifteen-month-old baby opens his mouth when I playfully take one of his fingers in my mouth and pretend to bite it…. ‘Biting’ immediately has an intersubjective meaning for him” (PP, 368).

REFERENCES

Abram, David. 2010. Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology. New York: Vintage Books.

Bauby, Jean-Dominique. 1997. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly: A Memoir of Life in Death. Trans. Jeremy Leggatt. London: Harper Perennial, 2004.

Bernal, Ellen. 1980. “The Meaning of Embodiment in the Thought of Michael Polanyi and Maurice Merleau-Ponty.” Unpublished PhD Dissertation, Department of Religion, Duke University.

Blair, Adam. 2022. “Meandering Peripheries: A Ground without Figure for Relief.” In Normality, Abnormality, and Pathology in Merleau-Ponty [NAP], ed. Susan Bredlau and Talia Welsh. Albany, NY: SUNY Press. 119–139.

Bredlau, Susan, and Talia Welsh. 2022. “Introduction,” in NAP. 1–16.

Cannon, Dale. 1994. “Haven’t You Noticed that Modernity Is Bankrupt? Ruminations on the Teaching Career of William H. Poteat.” Tradition and Discovery 21, no. 1: 20–32.

———. 2008. “Polanyi’s Influence on Poteat’s Conceptualization of Modernity’s ‘Insanity’ and Its Cure.” Tradition and Discovery 35, no. 2: 23–30.

———. 2021 (June 12). “The Critical to Post-Critical Shift: What It Means and Why It’s Important.” Michael Polanyi Society Zoom Session.

Cashell, Kieran. 2016. “Post-Critical Aesthetics,” in Recovering the Personal: The Philosophical Anthropology of William H. Poteat, ed. Dale W. Cannon and Ronald L Hall. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. 153–186.

Fullbrook, Edward, and Kate Fullbrook. 1998. “Merleau-Ponty on Beauvoir’s Literary-Philosophical Method.” Paper presented at the Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy, August 10–15, Boston, MA. Published in Paideia Archive, https://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/Lite/LiteFull.htm#topN. Part 2, “The Philosopher’s Point of View,” 2 (page number added by author).

Gelwick, Richard. 2003. “A Disembodied Adventurer.” Tradition and Discovery 30, no. 2: 35–40.

Gelb, Adhémar, and Kurt Goldstein. 1997. Analysis of a Case of Figural Blindness, in A Source Book of Gestalt Psychology, ed. Willis D. Ellis. Gouldsboro, ME: The Gestalt Journal Press, 315.

Goldstein, Kurt. 2000. The Organism: A Holistic Approach to Biology Derived from Pathological Data in Man. New York: Zone Books.

Howell, Patton, and James Hall. 2002. Locked Into Life. Boise, ID: Tea Road Press.

Howell, Whitney. 2022. “The Insight of Dispossession,” in NAP. 141–164.

Lowney, Charles, and Florentien Verhage. 2009 (November 7). “Of One Mind? Merleau-Ponty and Polanyi on the Reduction of Mind to Body.” Paper presented at the Polanyi Society Annual Meeting, Montreal, Quebec.

Lowney, Charles. 2014 (November 21). “The Emergency of Authenticity: Taylor and Polanyi on Overcoming the Scientistic Imaginary.” Paper presented at the Polanyi Society Annual Meeting, San Diego, CA.

Magrì, Elisa, and Paddy McQueen. 2023. Critical Phenomenology: An Introduction. Hoboken: Polity Press.

Mead, Walter. 2008. “A Symposium Encounter: The Philosophies of William Poteat and Michael Polanyi. Tradition and Discovery 35, no. 2: 1–8.

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. 1964. “The Child’s Relations with Others,” trans. William Cobb. In The Primacy of Perception and Other Essays, ed. James M. Edie. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. 96-158.

———. 1964a. “Cézanne’s Doubt,” trans. Hubert L. Dreyfus and Patricia A. Dreyfus. In Sense and Non-Sense, ed. Dreyfus and Dreyfus. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. 9–25, 13.

———. 1964b. “Metaphysics and the Novel,” trans. Hubert L. Dreyfus and Patricia A. Dreyfus. In Sense and Non-Sense. 139–152.

———. 1964c. “The War Has Taken Place,” trans. Hubert L. Dreyfus and Patricia A. Dreyfus. In Sense and Non-Sense. 26–40.

———. 1968. The Visible and the Invisible, trans. Alphonso Lingus, ed. Claude Lefort. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.

———. 2012. Phenomenology of Perception (PP), trans. and ed. Donald A. Landes. New York: Routledge.

Miéville, China. 2009. The City and the City. London: Macmillan.

Mullins, Phil. 2022. “Polanyi and Grene on Merleau-Ponty: Historical Notes with Footnotes to Charles Taylor, Francis Walshe, F. S. Rothschild, and Gilbert Ryle.” Tradition and Discovery 48, no. 3: 15–32.

Pawuk, Laura. 2022. Associate Professor of Music Therapy, Eastern Michigan University. Personal communication with author.

Polanyi, Michael. 1969. Knowing and Being: Essays by Michael Polanyi, ed. Marjorie Grene. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

———. 1962. Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

———. 1975. Meaning, ed. Michael Polanyi and Harry Prosch. University of Chicago Press.

Poteat, William H. 1993. “Myths, Stories, History, Eschatology and Action: Some Polanyian Meditations.” In The Primacy of Perception and the Language of Culture, ed. James Nickell and James Stines. Columbia: The University of Missouri Press. 43–73.

———. 1985. Polanyian Meditations: In Search of a Post-Critical Logic. Durham: Duke University Press.

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Slatman, Jenny. 2022. “Toward a Phenomenology of Abnormality,” in NAP. 19–39.

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Tarnas, Richard. 1991. The Passion of the Western Mind: Understanding the Ideas that Have Shaped Our World View. New York: Ballantine.

Trevarthen, Colwyn. 1975. “Early Attempts at Speech,” in Child Alive, ed. R. Lewin. New York: Anchor Press. 57–74.

Venable, Hannah Lyn. 2022. “The Need for Merleau-Ponty in Foucault’s Account of the Abnormal,” in NAP. 97–118.

BOOK REVIEW

Mathias Grote. Membranes to Molecular Machines: Active Matter and the Remaking of Life. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019. Cloth ISBN 9780226625157, $48.00. PDF ISBN 9780226625249, $47.99. EPB ISBN 9780226625294, $47.99.

Research on simple model proteins…has helped to transform the concept of proteins at the molecular level, thereby changing what ‘biological’ or ‘lifelike’ referred to…. Life has been made mechanical at the molecular level by zooming in on objects that may have actually been as much chemical as biological…. Life isn’t what it used to be because of research on objects such as this (180).

Mathias Grote’s dense but fascinating four-chapter book (complete with a helpful technical glossary and extensive notes) is an effort to do what its author describes as “grab the plethora of fascinating histories beyond the gene” (xii). Grote (who from 2004–2008 earned a PhD working in a German molecular biological laboratory) moves beyond mid-century molecular genetics to provide a history-of-science account of subsequent developments in membrane and protein biology—developments that “look at protein molecular machinery as an instance of active matter” (xiii). This mechanical molecular narrative evolves in stages and underpins the enormously effective membrane research that has had a large impact on contemporary molecular and biochemical science, biotechnologies, and medicine. Grote shows how membrane research has come to be “based on different conceptual and technological premises” and thus has “engendered a different picture of bodies, cells, and life…” (xii). In great detail, Grote’s chapters “describe the work of a generation of influential protagonists from the 1970s to 1990s, who had been shaping a novel molecular biology in these years” (xii). Further, he suggests, “since the 1990s, many more proteins, from those of our bodies to those of plants, animals, and microbes have become amenable to technologies pioneered with…model proteins, and a related mechanical understanding of their functioning has become predominant” (180).

Grote meticulously unfolds, in successive chapters, the emergence of the “molecular-mechanical vision” in terms of (1) research on membranes prior to 1970, (2) the subsequent relation of materials in test tubes to molecular structure and biological function, (3) the ramification of this new vision in synthetic biology, and, finally, (4) biotechnological and nanotechnological projects after 1980. He makes a case that developing notions of “active matter” (10) have countered an earlier stereotype of matter as inert and homogeneous.

Grote recognizes that the “molecular-mechanical vision” is a materialistic perspective pitched at a certain level and that another different vision pitched at another level (e.g., that of the whole organism) might have materialized. He does not explore, like Polanyi, intricate philosophical questions about the interrelation of levels of control in machines or in living entities, and this Polanyi wrinkle might interest him. Grote thus restricts his account to “how this novel molecular biopolitics has been put into place, or ‘realized’ in a material sense, by transforming the materiality of life in the hands and minds of scientists in the laboratory” (7). Or, as he later puts matters, “This book has been largely a history of materiality as well as of approaches, instruments and methods” (201).

Although, taken as a whole, this book is a history-of-science account, it reminded this reader of Kuhn’s famous history-of-science book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions: the historical discussion hovers around larger and more perplexing metaphysical questions central to philosophy of science, and Grote recognizes this. In fact, he invokes an Ian Hacking comment on “entity realism,” suggesting that entities that science can know are in fact “real” (14). Nevertheless, the author seems to back away from broader ontological implications of this view: he suggests only that his book shows clearly how and why scientists have come to regard “molecular machines” as real. He affirms that certainly there is an “epistemic dividend” (139) in the “molecular machine” account since it allows understanding. But alas, Grote seems not to know anything about Polanyi’s earlier mid-twentieth century, discovery-centered account of science with its rich anti-Cartesian participant realism that focuses on the indeterminate future manifestations of real entities.

A mundane example in Grote’s discussion makes pellucid what he calls the contemporary “powerful, materialistic vision of life” (1) that arose and has become pervasive in the last fifty years: The “proton pump inhibitor” (1) is a pill, easily available today for heartburn. After taking the pill, “gastric mucosa cells excrete fewer protons into the stomach, leading to less acid production” (2). The pill thus “alters the mode of operation of our body’s ‘molecular machinery,’ thus modifying cellular physiology” (2). Grote chronicles how molecules for researchers became a “pump since there are mobile elements in its organization that push something over a distance in this case moved by the energy of light” (8). This mechanical image arose in opposition to “mathematical expressions of physics or theoretical biology, or to chemical formula in the reaction equation,” and thus eventually the “explanation given here takes the form of a highly complex narration” (10). But the bottom line is rather mundane:

If you can block the proton pumps in your gastric mucosa and record the effect both on the level of the protein (decreased function) as much as on that of the organism (decrease of acidity in the stomach, relief of pain), these pumps must have become real in some way to the scientific community, and to those endorsing its knowledge production. (14)

As Grote’s detailed and nuanced discussion shows, it is not simply “pumps” but all kinds of mechanical (and later electrical) elements and processes that have slowly come to constitute the framework for understanding and manipulating membranes. This move has newly opened up questions about what life is:

It is the material modeling of membranous objects and their dynamics—from mixing lipids and water for spontaneous membrane formation, to extractions, centrifugations, syntheses of “protocells” to the study of communication between cells and interactions with their environment—that has allowed membrane research to re-formulate and re-cast many of the central issues of the life sciences. Stories from membrane research challenge distinctions such as those between the living and unenlivened, or the “natural” and the “synthetic.” (32)

Grote emphasizes, of course, that contemporary material modeling focuses on biomolecules, and that is in some way different than the discussion of organs as machine-like that began in early modern philosophy (and is in some ways carried over in thinkers like Polanyi).

The discussion of membrane sciences here focuses detailed attention on what Grote dubs “chemical thinking and working,” which addresses “isolation, preparation, making, and reassembling matter” (33). He shows how different threads of research came to be connected and how work on “membrane transport” (41) helped draw things together early. The “machine analogy” became more than analogical since it came to “‘reconstitute’ biochemical reactions” (51). Subsequently, in the 1980s, “novel methods” were developed through which membrane proteins could be isolated biochemically and “material models” (56) of membrane processes could be emulated in a test tube. Thus a model of membrane organization as a mosaic emerged. Grote chronicles the key discovery of bacteriorhodopsin (BP) as an ideal (colored) membrane protein for research. He shows how some areas of basic biological inquiry became more reliant on “chemical practices” and thus became more about materials in test tubes that could be “de- and recomposed or modified”; the “transformed materiality of biological matter” shaped the now predominant “contemporary molecular-mechanical vision” (115).

Grote shows how, as components of life became modules of material substances, researchers “acquired an arsenal of living substances that is synthetic in many ways” (113), which they could manipulate:

Produced by genetically engineered organisms or made by automats assembling molecules, modified by attaching tags or probes to it, and finally assembled into a cell-like structure that can be researched in a “plug and play” mode. (113)

“Chemical molecular biologists” in work on “biological macromolecules” (135) made them entities that can be made and remade by human beings. “Man-made, hybrid and mobile chemical substances are recognized as ‘synthetic’ by ‘protein engineering’” (139). The “materiality of life” (114) in biological science late in the twentieth century thus became something fundamentally different than it was in the middle of the century. As Grote provocatively puts matters, using a German term for “material substance” (187), there was a “transformation of life’s material inventory from Stoff of nature toward Stoff of the laboratory….” This transformation is the “hallmark of the present molecular life science” where “research on life is caried out widely in the ‘plug and play’ mode” (116).

Grote’s final chapter turns to a review of what he dubs the “visionary, alternative and radical aspects” (169) of biotech in the eighties. Some of the projects on biochips and nanotechnology, sometimes projects tied up with speculative capital, seem not to have produced much other than speculation, although membrane science seems to lie behind this in the deep background. Grote comments, at the end of his book, on the personas of most of the major players in the development of the molecular-mechanical vision:

Most of those encountered in this story stayed faithful to small-scale science in academic institutions, nobody turned into a public intellectual dabbling in philosophy or politics, and the degree of self-historicization in this field has been negligible if compared to molecular biology, recombinant DNA or the Human Genome Project (205).

Phil Mullins

mullins@missouriwestern.edu

Table of Contents

Submissions for Tradition and Discovery FAQs

Polanyi on Nihilism, Political Authority, and the Vitiation of Conviviality

Learning to Be Post-Critical: An Interview with Dale Cannon

Review Essay

Book Review