Preface Round III

In this final round of volume 51, we present two reviews and an interview. The first review, by Colin Cordner, is of the neo-Aristotelian Professions and Politics in Crisis by Mark L. Jones, Professor of Law (Mercer University). In it, Jones attempts to apply the comprehensive work of Alasdair MacIntyre to the challenge of enucleating the nature of the professional and existential crises affecting the legal community, and the pathways to health

The second review, by Damon Kutzin, is of Donovan Schaefer’s Wild Experiment. In it, Schaefer constructively builds upon Polanyi’s insights into the place of the emotions and passions in science and culture generally – as well as some pathological forms of intellectual passion, such as conspiracy theories.

Finally, we round-out the volume with an interview between Martin Turkis II and Musa al-Gharbi about the latter’s recent book We Have Never Been Woke, on the concept of “woke” and symbolic political gestures, the impact of Michael Polanyi upon his thinking, and the x-phi or experimental philosophy movement.

Preface Round II

In this issue of TAD, we take an extended look at Martin Turkis II’s recent book The Metaphysics of Michael Polanyi: Toward a Post-Critical Platonism (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024). In it, Turkis seeks to mutually illuminate and extend aspects of both Polanyian and Platonic metaphysics, and bring them into comparison with parallel schools of thought. Turkis’ thesis has sparked a very lively debate, earning responses from Dale Cannon, Graham Harman, Vincent Colapietro, and William M.R. Simpson.

Preface Round I

The first round of contributions to Volume 51 of Tradition & Discovery had two contributions which encourage us to approach Polanyi’s thought again with fresh eyes and a different take.

  • First is Jon Fennell’s “Everyone a Sailor: Oakeshott’s Affinity for the Polanyian Vision of Human Activity” – an attempt to plumb deeper, unrecognized resonances between M.P. and the famous British skeptic, conservative, and Hobbes commentator, Michael Oakeshott.
  • Second is a review E. San Juan Jr.’s Peirce’s Pragmaticism: A Radical Perspective by new TAD contributor Paloma Pérez-Ilzarbe. Pérez-Ilzarbe’s review invites us to think of Pierce’s work a bit differently – from the direction of the concerns of the New Left and social activism.
About the authors:
  • Musa al-Gharbi is a sociologist whose work investigates the production of a shared understanding of social phenomena including inequality, social movements, identity, extremism, policing, national security, foreign policy and domestic U.S. political contests. His first book, We Have Never Been Woke, was published by Princeton University Press in 2024. He teaches at Stony Brook University.
  • Dale Cannon (cannodw@wou.edu) is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Western Oregon University. He is a long time member of the Polanyi Society and has published numerous articles on Polanyi and the post-critical turn.
  • Vincent Colapietro (vcolapietro@uri.edu) is an Adjunct Professor of Humanities at the University of Rhode Island. His research interests include American pragmatism (especially Peirce, James, and Dewey), literature, film, and music (especially, jazz), semiotics, poststructuralism, psychoanalysis, social and political philosophy, and philosophical and experimental psychology.
  • Jon Fennell (jfennell@hillsdale.edu) is professor emeritus at Hillsdale College. He is the author of numerous studies on Polanyi.
  • Graham Harman is an American philosopher with a focus on metaphysics. His work has given rise to Object-Oriented Ontology, an influential approach to metaphysics. He is a central figure in the Post-Continental movement known as Speculative Realism. The author of many books and articles, he is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the Southern California Institute of Architecture.
  • Damon Kutzin (dtk23@cam.ac.uk) is a PhD student in the history and philosophy of science at the University of Cambridge. He is currently writing up a dissertation on scientific realism and Michael Polanyi. Other areas of interest include general epistemology, American pragmatism, and the philosophy of emotions.
  • Paloma Pérez-Ilzarbe (pilzarbe@unav.es) is Associate Professor of Logic and Philosophy of Science at the University of Navarra (Spain). Her main publications concern late medieval and post-medieval terminism.
  • William M.R. Simpson is a philosopher and theoretical physicist whose research falls at the intersection of physics and philosophy, spilling over into philosophy of mind and philosophy of religion. He is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Durham University. He is also a Research Fellow of the University of Oxford and a Research Associate of the University of Cambridge.
  • Martin Turkis II (mturkis@yahoo.com) is a teacher, writer, and musician residing in San Francisco. He received his doctorate in philosophy from the University of Navarra in Pamplona, Spain. His interests include metaphysics, virtue ethics, philosophy of education, and political economy.

With Volume 51, Tradition & Discovery’s seriatim publishing also moves to a new format, which we hope will improve its accessibility, its visibility on the Web to search engines and academic institutions, and the overall efficiency of publication. Each article of the 3 initial “tranches” of the volume will be published in HTML and a simplified PDF format, with the final complete volume being packaged and designed in a manner consistent with our previous volumes

Table of Contents

Article

Book Reviews

Reviews of Martin Turkis’s Book and Author’s Response

  • Dale Cannon – A Review Essay of “The Metaphysics of Michael Polanyi: Toward a Post-Critical Platonism” by Martin Turkis II
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  • Vincent M. Colapietro – The Eclipse of the Personal? Affirmations, Proposals, and Questions
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  • Graham Harman – Michael Polanyi and Object-Oriented Ontology: In Response to Turkis
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  • William M. R. Simpson – Matter and Form in Polanyi’s ‘Post-Critical Platonism’
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  • Martin E. Turkis II – Space for a Post-Critical Platonism: A Response to my Interlocutors
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