Jon Fennell on Michael Polanyi and Michael Oakeshott


Zoom Session:

March 18, 2025 – 12 Noon-1:30pm Central Standard Time

(10am West Coast US, 1pm East Coast US, 6pm UTC, 7pm Central European Time)

Presented by Jon Fennell with a Response from Ken McIntyre

Michael Oakeshott was a British philosopher who was a contemporary of Michael Polanyi. Over the years, several Polanyi scholars have brought Oakeshott and Polanyi’s thought into limited contact. Strikingly, Oakeshott wrote an important early review of Personal Knowledgethat was published in 1958 in Encounter. In her inimitable vehement voice, Marjorie Grene responded to Oakeshott’s review. This Zoom Session will focus on Jon Fennell’s essay, “Everyone a Sailor: Oakeshott’s Affinity for the Polanyian Vision of Human Activity” (forthcoming in February in the 2025 volume of Tradition and Discovery: The Polanyi Society Journal ). In addition to examining Oakeshott’s assessment of Polanyi’s magnum opusas well as Grene’s reaction to it, the essay centrally argues that there is a deep fundamental congruence between the views of Polanyi and Oakeshott regarding the character of the human enterprise that, while acknowledged by neither of the authors, proves to be of considerable value to each of them, especially in regard to the question of moral justification. In this envisioned alliance, their positions are substantially strengthened. Ken McIntyre, an eminent Oakeshott scholar and President of the Michael Oakeshott Association, will respond to Fennell’s essay.

Anyone interested in this Zoom Session (which will take place on Tuesday, 18 March 2025 from 12 noon to 1:30 p.m. Central Standard Time) is welcome to participate. We will in March post the Zoom link information for this event on the Polanyi Society web page. We will also be providing information on this session on the Polanyi Society discussion list.

If you wish to receive a reminder e-mail on 17 March 2025 with the Zoom information included, send an e-mail to both Gus Breytspraak (gus.breytspraak@ottawa.edu) and Phil Mullins (mullins@missouriwestern.edu) requesting that you be added to the e-mail reminder list.

Like earlier Zoom Sessions, this Zoom Session will be recorded and posted. If you wish to receive an e-mail with a link for the recording, send a request to Breytspraak and Mullins asking to be added to the e-mail reminder list.

Since Fennell’s full paper is not yet posted in the 2025 volume of Tradition and Discovery, immediately below is a summary prepared by Fennell. As soon as the full essay is posted in TAD vol. 51 a link for the full essay will be added to this summary.


Everyone a Sailor: Oakeshott’s Affinity for the Polanyian Vision of Human Activity

(A Summary Prepared for the March 18, 2025 Zoom Discussion)

Everything actually in experience is already infected with the possibility of being unsatisfactory, and yet nothing save what is in experience can serve as a criterion for experience.

— Michael Oakeshott

Soon after its publication in 1958, Michael Oakeshott wrote a thoughtful review of Michael Polanyi’s Personal Knowledge. As we explore what scholars familiar with Polanyi have written about Oakeshott, we find the accusation of moral relativism. Oakeshott, however, is not the moral relativist he sometimes is alleged to be. Rather, he contends that, while moral guidance not defined through and bound by tradition (human practices) is a chimera, relativism in moral life is not a necessary consequence. And Polanyi would agree. A primary theme of this study is that Oakeshott has in Polanyi an ally whose rejection of subjectivism and an affiliated moral relativism is stouter than it might initially appear.

The central argument of the essay is as follows: Polanyi, despite his manifest emphasis on the personal, is not a moral relativist; in relevant significant respects, there is a deep affinity between the views of Oakeshott and Polanyi; therefore, Oakeshott, too, is not a moral relativist. Personal Knowledge offers substantial support for the conception of human activity and political life Oakeshott has outlined and defended over the course of a long career.

An Encompassing Metaphor

Oakeshott’s conception of intellectual and moral maturity is effectively captured in a 1951 metaphor, the ship at sea, that is perhaps the most enduring and telling feature of his entire corpus. He states,

In political activity…men sail a boundless and bottomless sea; there is neither harbour for shelter nor floor for anchorage, neither starting-place nor appointed destination. The enterprise is to keep afloat on an even keel; the sea is both friend and enemy; and the seamanship consists in using the resources of a traditional manner of behaviour in order to make a friend of every hostile occasion.

In the face of this uncompromising condition, a variety of responses is possible. One of these is to deny the truth through affiliation with unreal conceptions of meaning, direction, and purpose (that are, of course, ironically the product of what is already present on the ship). A more useful and mature response is to acknowledge our predicament, assess the challenges, inventory our resources, and take appropriate action. Appreciating the vital importance of existing assets, we will institute measures to preserve them for use in a future whose character must ever remain largely unknown. In addition, properly prepared members of the crew will enjoy not only the confidence arising from knowing that the ship has up to now sailed a good long time but also the courage required to carry on indefinitely in the future. Unlike their less astute, less candid, and less intrepid mates, they neither hide from the truth nor are paralyzed by it. Always at the ready to keep the ship afloat, they realize that the essential element in doing so is preserving the beliefs and practices that have secured our survival thus far by arranging for sailors like themselves to be replicated through the initiation and apprenticeship of the young who follow.

Each of us, then, through no choice of one’s own, finds himself at sea with a consciousness he just happens to have that is coincidental with a responsibility that may through inebriation, delusion, or other mechanism be veiled but in fact cannot be escaped. Human life for Oakeshott is an “ordeal” in which no particular outcome is fated and the individual in the final analysis is on his own. On the positive side of the ledger, it is possible for such experience to be an “adventure” (Oakeshott’s term) that is exciting precisely for being unconstrained by the distraction of immediate destination. But there is no concealing the intrinsic loneliness and ongoing difficulty of the human condition. The one thing that is “in the cards” is a lack of certainty and the corresponding burden of self-definition. If one is fortunate—and this depends on assimilation of and transformation by the traditional treasures in principle available to all, but historically fully appreciated by only the few—one in the process learns to be human (that is, to possess a traditionally esteemed character and identity). Such an outcome is an historic achievement that is not in any sense “in the nature of things.” With such, it is possible to experience short respite from the ongoing struggle. But there is no prospect of permanent relief. And, in response to those tempted to lament this condition, Oakeshott would remind us that to characterize this condition as tragic would be a mistake, for in making such an assessment one necessarily posits a perfection alien to human experience and for which history offers no support.

Common Ground

There is much in common between Oakeshott’s portrayal of the human enterprise and what is set forth, over more than 400 pages, by Polanyi in Personal Knowledge. Some of these common features are reported by Oakeshott in his review of the book. Oddly, however, most of them, including elements central to Oakeshott’s account, are not noted therein.

In that account, Oakeshott will employ an idiom as he outlines the central role played by idiom (and hence voice) in the human enterprise. There is, then, in Oakeshott a performative consistency that is reminiscent of that which characterizes the heart of Polanyi’s intellectual edifice (especially as it is fully explicated in Personal Knowledge).

Moreover, with Oakeshott’s pronounced emphasis on the human “predicament” (his term) the eternal challenge to establish rational justification is an aspect of Polanyi’s account that should be well understood by Oakeshott. Further, and above all, it is Oakeshott, the philosopher of experience, who should recognize the significant amendment to the meaning of experience, as well as to the associated concept of reality, that is resident in Polanyi’s fruitfully elaborated notion of the “personal.” This personalist expansion of Oakeshott’s vision is a central theme of this study.

Moral Relativism and the Human Condition

The pivotal observation in Oakeshott’s response to the charge of relativism is that any conceivable principle (i.e., any conceivable norm, standard, or criterion to which one might appeal during moral deliberation) is as much on the ship at sea as are the “intimations” (a key term for Oakeshott) from which on his account we in political decision-making take our bearings. Oakeshott, however, fails to recognize the degree and depth to which Polanyi subscribes to this same vision. And, indeed, Polanyi, due to his focus on the personal, is the more forthright and comprehensive in articulating the deepest implications of it. This is especially true in regard to the possibilities for justification.

On the other hand, Polanyi’s universal intent and its objects, and discovery and its results (including Polanyi’s “firmament of truth and greatness” [PK, 380]), are, so to speak, on the ship at sea, where they are enlisted as resources. In light of what Polanyi himself states, they can be no place else.

But Polanyi, via the striking image of the second apple, (PK, 268) has, through a deepening of the problematic condition, transformed the central human drama from the predicament of the ship’s inhabitants considered collectively to the predicament facing each of the constituent individuals. As a result, the problem of justification becomes more fundamental precisely because it shows itself to be essentially and eminently personal.

On Realism, Experience, and the Meaning of Coherence

It certainly is proper to label Polanyi a “realist,” but by his own analysis we must conclude that such realism, due to the inescapable role of the personal in its discovery and appreciation, is subordinate to Oakeshott’s conception of experience. Yet, the reciprocal fact is that Oakeshott’s “idealism” is subordinate to Polanyi’s conception of the personal, including its emphasis on a reality yet to be discovered.

In regard to the centrality of coherence in human life, there is a strong affinity between Oakeshott and Polanyi. The coherence, and hence the influential power, of what one already knows makes possible the knowing of even more. But the same influence responsible for acceptance of one claimant to the truth is also responsible for the rejection of another. This constitutes the operation of conscience that is the very core of the central affirmation—”‘ I believe that in spite of the hazards involved, I am called upon to search for the truth and state my findings’ ”—that gives rise to Personal Knowledge (PK, 299).

Two Conceptions of Coherence

Oakeshott’s account of objectivity, fact, and knowledge prompts us to recognize in Personal Knowledge two distinct conceptions of coherence. These may be labelled “coherence1” and “coherence2.” Among the most interesting features of the book is its analysis of the Azande people of Africa. Polanyi finds in them an extraordinary and telling instance of stability of belief. Routinely employing a variety of intellectual devices, the Azande sustain what the preponderant Western tradition understands to be a magical view of the world. They do so by deflecting any and all incursion upon it by rival conceptions. As a result, all new (ongoing) experience reinforces belief that is the product of prior experience. The Zande view of the world is coherent, and it functions effectively and persists because it is coherent. Yet, Polanyi, after saluting the ingeniousness of Zande culture and its constituent practices, in the name of truth straightforwardly rejects the resulting understanding. The Azande are wrong about the world. This is a result of the clarity (the coherence) he enjoys due to his allegiance to the rival naturalistic framework.

The Azande offer an instance of coherence1. What makes Polanyi’s rejection of the Zande framework possible is the influence of coherence2. But the primary reason Polanyi cites the Azande is that their stability of belief so clearly illuminates the character of all comprehensive frameworks, including the naturalistic framework. In its parallel stability of belief, the naturalistic framework and the world it sustains is also an instance of coherence1. What, then, is this coherence2 that underlies Polanyi’s criticism of the Azande? And from what is it derived? The answer is that coherence2 is coherence1 as it is exercised personally in the form of the ongoing inferences and judgments (including acts of knowing) that constitute one’s active being in the world.

Polanyi’s Central Contribution: The Role of the Personal

Oakeshott, especially with his image of the ship at sea, approximates what is passionately expressed in Personal Knowledge by Polanyi. Oakeshott’s account becomes all the richer to the degree that he more fully appreciates Polanyi’s emphasis on the personal and understands the importance for his own position of recognizing and affirming the role played by coherence2.

Coherence is the sole criterion of justification for Oakeshott. What Polanyi is asserting is that Oakeshott’s bar is itself subject to a deeper criterion and, further, that this criterion is self-set.

By now, the meaning of the epigraph to this study should be evident. As is the case with Polanyi, Oakeshott affirms the fallibility of any claim to know. Making the epigraph especially important is that Oakeshott expresses fallibility in terms of his emphasis on experience. If and when a claim to know turns out to be unfounded, this is (and can only be) because it fails to cohere with other elements of experience. Naturally, that which is cited to discredit the claim to know may, in principle, itself subsequently prove to be unfounded. But that, too, would be the result of failing to cohere with yet other instances of experience. Oakeshott, that is to say, means precisely what he says—and nothing else.

Tradition (as a source of formation and authority as well as an enduring trans-generational vehicle for such) remains as important in Polanyi’s account of the human condition as it is for Oakeshott. What Polanyi will make clear is that tradition achieves its significance through its personally-mediated impact on the individual, and derives its meaning from the personally-understood contributions of untold prior individuals.

To see that Oakeshott in his account of political life is not a moral relativist, it is only necessary to appreciate the frame of mind implicit in that account and so fruitfully described and modelled by the Polanyi of Personal Knowledge.

Concluding Observations

In summary, mankind for Polanyi resides on the ship at sea as much as it does for Oakeshott. We know this from paying close attention to the Polanyi of Personal Knowledge and thinking through the implications of what he states therein. For neither writer would it be accurate to suggest that mankind was thereby restricted in perspective or denied access to something beyond. This is because the use of such terms presupposes a possibility that simply does not exist within their respective accounts of the human condition. Herein lies the deepest affinity between their rich and complex epistemological and anthropological projects.

Polanyi’s vision of human activity (including, most notably, moral justification) does not make him a relativist. Thus, given the congruence of the two writers’ conception of the human condition and its possibilities, we must conclude that Oakeshott also is not a relativist. Oakeshott effectively defends this judgment in his own terms. What this study further establishes is that Oakeshott is not a moral relativist on Polanyian grounds—grounds that are deeper, more comprehensive, and more clearly profound than those offered in his own defense by Oakeshott.