Zoom Discussion
Saturday, November 22, 2025
11:00 am —12:30 pm Central Standard Time
This Zoom Discussion will focus on what contemporary sociologists Carolin Amlinger and Oliver Nachtwey identify (in Offended Freedom) as a new form of political protest in Western societies: libertarian authoritarianism. This new form of political protest combines a rebellion against all perceived constraints on individual freedom with an authoritarian insistence on an individual’s will. Libertarian authoritarianism generates widespread skepticism, resistence to any authority and animosity toward science. Amlinger and Nachtwey’s account of contemporary libertarian authoritarianism has interesting parallels with some of the patterns of thought that Michael Polanyi saw developing in western culture in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This overlap makes Polanyi’s analysis a valuable point of reference for reflecting on libertarian authoritarianism. Polanyi also provides promising conceptual resources for countering libertarian authoritariansim. These include his view of scientific knowledge as possessing an inexact yet rational foundation, his model of the “republic of science” as a self-regulating community ensuring intellectual integrity, and his understanding of scientific inquiry as an exemplar of public liberty.
This Zoom Discussion will thus bring together some contemporary ideas about libertarian authoritarianism and Michael Polanyi’s earlier cultural-political-epistemic analysis. Stefan Kosak’s short paper “Michael Polanyi on the Trustworthiness of Science–A Promising Response to the Renewed Skepticism about Science?” (HTML) (PDF) provides a starting point for this Zoom Discussion. Kosak comments on Amlinger and Nachtwey’s recent discussion of libertarian authoritarianism and Polanyi’s earlier discussion of and response to similar threads in late modern culture.