For the last third of the twentieth century on up to the present,
we have been increasingly inundated in almost every discipline
with intellectual work that identifies itself (or is readily
identifiable) as post-modern, in opposition to now openly questioned
assumptions that have characterized the dominant modern
intellectual culture (particularly that associated with the European
Enlightenment) for the previous 250 years. What I have in
mind when I speak of “post-modern,” though, is not just family
resemblances among the contents of this grouping of intellectual
work, despite its great diversity. I wish to speak of post-modernism
as an intellectual ethos that has been challenging and progressively
displacing the previous intellectual ethos (that of modernism),
an ethos that has to do with presuppositions governing the
attitudes, methods, and interpersonal relationships of intellectual
reflection, discussion, and exchange.
Virtually the entire body of philosophical work by Michael
Polanyi was published prior to the emergence of post-modernism.
As much of Polanyi’s work was devoted to criticism of some of the
most fundamental assumptions at work in modern intellectual
culture, it would seem reasonable to locate Polanyi as postmodernist
or allied with post-modernism in some sense of the
word. However, the bulk of post-modern intellectual work has
been decidedly more negatively critical than Polanyi of the
pretentions of modern thought to certainty, to universality, and
to objectivity (i.e., to a radical transcending of human subjectivity),
especially of the divine-like prestige of modern scientific
knowledge held up for emulation by all other intellectual endeavors.
So where does Polanyi’s thought fit into this mix?
The subtitle of Polanyi’s magnum opus,1 is “Towards a Post-
Critical Philosophy.” Polanyi himself actually wrote relatively
little on what he meant and understood by the term “postcritical”—
though he clearly meant by it the fundamentally different
approach to philosophical, and especially epistemological,
issues taken in that work.2 Though others before me have attempted
to explain what Polanyi meant by the term “post-critical”
and have ventured to locate Polanyi’s thought in relation to postmodernism,
I don’t think that these attempts have grasped the full
relevance of Polanyi’s thought to the controversies and confusions
surrounding post-modernism. Though he did not live long
enough to be exposed to and become acquainted with the principal
expressions of post-modernism, Polanyi’s work properly
understood is, I believe, directly addressed to the core issues at
stake. I think that Polanyi’s coinage of the term “post-critical” is
an extraordinarily apt designation of what can move us beyond the
dead ends and stalemates of post-modernism. Why I believe this
is so will become more evident in what follows.
David Ray Griffin of the Center for Process Studies at
Claremont Graduate University invented and introduced a distinction,
probably in the late 1970s or early 1980s, between
“constructive post-modernism” and “deconstructive post-modernism”
that is relevant here.3 For several years Griffin was
general editor of a series of volumes on constructive postmodernism
published by SUNY Press. Whereas the most wellknown
post-modern intellectual work is characterized by
deconstructive analyses of modernist ideas, practices, and institutions
that do not offer constructive alternative hypotheses and
proposals, there are some that do. These Griffin designates
“constructive post-modern.” He particularly has in mind work
that has been influenced by the thought of Alfred North Whitehead
as exemplary of this type, though he does not limit it to
Whitehead-influenced work. Polanyi’s work would clearly fall
under this loose category. Nevertheless, in the present essay I will
stick to Polanyi’s usage of “post-critical.” And most of the time I
refer to post-modernism I shall be referring to what Griffin
designates “deconstructive post-modernism.”
Polanyi’s endeavor to shift himself and his readers from a
critical to a post-critical orientation in epistemology, from a
critical to a post-critical intellectual paradigm (he spoke of
“intellectual framework” rather than “paradigm”), from a critical
to a post-critical intellectual ethos is not easily understood—
partly because there is no neutral, common presuppositional
framework from which to consider and appreciate both the
former and the latter. They are in certain respects (though not in
all) incommensurable. A shift from indwelling the one to indwelling
the other involves what Polanyi calls an irreversible gestalt
shift. This shift is no less great and momentous than the shift from
a pre-critical to a critical orientation, and keeping the latter shift
in mind is helpful in understanding what it involves.
What Polanyi understood by the critical orientation has
less to do with the explicit ideals and beliefs of modernity than
with the underlying tacit attitudes and methodology of modernity—
that is to say, its intellectual ethos. The latter defines
itself in opposition to what modernity has designated and
differentiated itself from being, namely, a pre-critical, premodern
orientation. What is meant here by a pre-critical, premodern
orientation is not necessarily prior in historical times;
most importantly, it is construed as developmentally prior and
condescendingly so. Looked at in this way, the intellectual
ethos of deconstructive post-modernism, from the perspective
of a Polanyian analysis, is essentially continuous with that of
modernity. Where it differs from modernism is that its critical
attitude is now turned upon the ideals, beliefs, and institutions
of modernity (including such cherished ideals as truth, beauty,
justice, liberty, the inherent dignity of all human beings,
fraternity, universal education, and democracy). In effect,
deconstructive post-modernism actually amounts to critical
modernism turning upon itself. It is the final culmination of the
critical project of modernity, what Polanyi called the “selfimmolation
of the modern mind.”
The critical movement, which seems to be nearing the end of
its course today, was
perhaps the most fruitful effort ever sustained by the human
mind. The past four or five centuries, which have gradually
destroyed or overshadowed the whole medieval cosmos, have
enriched us mentally and morally to an extent unrivaled by any
period of similar duration. But its incandescence had fed on the
combustion of the Christian heritage in the oxygen of Greek
rationalism, and when this fuel was exhausted the critical
framework itself burnt away.4
For Polanyi himself, the critical framework had burnt itself
away, but in many respects and for much of contemporary
intellectual culture the critical framework remains intact as the
deconstructing force of post-modernism. The consequence is
that the shift from a critical to a post-critical orientation is not
from modernism to post-modernism but from the critical orientation
that they both share to an intellectual ethos beyond them
both, a post-critical intellectual ethos, beyond post-modernism.
I believe that the following chart contrasting the four intellectual
ethoi—pre-modern/pre-critical, modern, post-modern, and
post-critical—will help to make clear what I am saying.
The remainder of this paper will be devoted, first, to characterizing
the critical project of modernity that is shared by both
modernism and deconstructive post-modernism. Second, I will
characterize what I take to be the crux of the shift from a critical
to a post-critical orientation. Third, I will identify the principal
features of a post-critical intellectual ethos which Polanyi’s
thought opens up.
Deconstructive Post-Modernity
To have acquired a modern critical mind is to have been habituated,
on the one hand, to distrust one’s first and natural inclination
to indwell the world believingly and, on the other hand, to
| Situatedness(Context) of Claims | Truth & Tradition | |
| Pre-Modern (Pre-Critical) intellectual ethos | Parochially situated but making unqualified, naïvely universal claims. | Truth (territory) is undifferentiated from a tradition’s own representations (its maps). |
| Modern (Critical) intellectual ethos | Makes universal claims allegedly situation-less(“the view from nowhere”); foundationalist (presumes there are absolute criteria for establishing knowledge claims). | Attainment of Truth requires a divorce from tradition-based/bred thinking (escaping any and all situated points ofview); Truth is what ends up on the one objective map, same for all. |
| Post-Modern (Hyper-Critical) intellectual ethos (note continuity with the Modern intellectual ethos, via its inordinate emphasis on medthodological doubt) | Avoids universal claims.Because we are radically situated, attaining universality is inconceivable; anti-foundationalist.A radically diverse plurality of perspectives. | Only traditional representations (situated points of view) exist; there is no meaningfulsense of transcendent Truth (no territory beyond our maps); the scientific map is just one among others. |
| Post-Critical intellectual ethos(also construable as “Constructive Post-Modern”) | Situated, fallible but makes claims of universal intent; seeks ahorizontal universality /transcendence vs. moderism’s presumed vertical universality /transcendence. | Truth regarded as uncertainly glimpsed from within traditions(situated points of view);efforts to attain it are rooted but not confined. |
| Methodological Faith (fides) & Doubt | Knowable World/ Reality | Objectivity (how achieved) |
| Unquestioned, uncritical faith (not yet having confronted its finitude and fallibility); methodological doubt toward other ‘faiths’. | The world seen from one perspective only; no consideration of how things appear from other perspectives. | Objectivity identified with faithfulness with adherence to cultural authority and its representations. |
| Aims to purge by methodological doubt allfallible (error prone), fiduciary elements(anything subjective, anything faith-based);(except surrepticiously it keeps faith in methodological doubt and liberal ideals). | One objective world, universally structured (invariant for all); inprinciple wholly specifiable within a single formal framework(a single perspective of apparent perspectivelessness). | Objectivity attained via a uniformalization—that presumes to transcend all particular perspectives, invariant for all (i.e., adherence to the one map). (Note the unacknowledgedplace of authority and tradition here.) |
| Because methodological doubt is dominant, fiduciary, fallible factors are recognized impossible to eliminate or to be transcended, making objectivity and Truth impossible; modern liberal ideals now in question (yet still a methodological faith in the hermeneutic of suspicion). | Each in his/her own separate world (constituted by each different perspective); no confidence of inter-accessibility. The modern uniformalized,”objective” perspective is now seen as only one among others and problematic (not what it pretends to be). | Objectivity deemed impossible (except as appearance, as pretense).Ironically, objectivity of a sort is achieved in repudiating attachment to any one view. (Note the tacit role of authority and tradition here.) |
| Fiduciary factors seen as a positive though fallible means toward objectivity and Truth; methodological faith and doubt kept in balance, with a chastened faith taking the lead. | One world transcendent to any one perspective,but in principle accessible simultaneously from multiple but partial perspectives, which we seek (one by one) to integrate. Note necessary role of empathy. | Objectivity to be attained via the on going intersection of different relevant perspectives; traditional authorities play a subordinate role in affording access to their unique angle onto the world. |
entrust oneself to the attitude of critical suspicion as the cardinal
intellectual virtue. In post-modern jargon, this attitude has come
to be called the “hermeneutic of suspicion.” Modernity (and postmodernity
along with it) is premised on the assumption that the
root of all error is the inherent human proclivity to project into
reality what is not there but only in oneself, in one’s credulity and
subjective bias. Our modern intellectual conscience insists that
we will get at the truth of the matters that concern us only by
divesting ourselves of subjectivity, by stepping outside of our
merely personal, commonsense, mindbodily5 perspectives and by
following impersonal, “objective” procedures (i.e., procedures
supposed to insure objectivity). In consequence, on reflection at
least (self-critical reflection, that is), we moderns have difficulty
believing in our own beliefs and trusting without defensiveness in
any inward summons to venture beyond the safety of impersonally
established truths–unless it be critically to disestablish or
deconstruct someone else’s alleged truths. (This is not to say that
such critical efforts do not have their rightful place. It is only to
say that such efforts become the only encouraged—indeed, the
only “safe”—creative work within the modern critical perspective.)
Our modern minds largely disable us from venturing to
construct or establish anything at all. If our own critical intellectual
conscience fails to keep our subjectivity in check, we can be
sure that our professional colleagues’ critical faculties will be
more than adequate for the job. It should be clear from this that
so-called “post-modern” perspectives that define themselves as
deconstructive of any and all modern claims to have overcome
subjectivity and to have arrived at objective truth are merely a
continuation of the modern critical tradition.
Let me be more specific. What is it that makes the critical
thinking that distinguishes modernity (and, as I am maintaining,
post-modernity) critical? It is critical suspicion and doubt that is
directed toward distorting contributions of human subjectivity to
our knowing of the world—principally that of uncritical belief and
credulity. Of course, that critical suspicion and doubt is directed
toward the possibility of bias, preconception, prejudice, etc., but
it is also directed toward the very possibility that truth could arise
through personal relationship and involvement. Hence it counsels
withdrawal, detachment, a withholding of assent and investment
of self—for the purpose of countering and calling into question
what is deemed to be subjective and credulous tendencies in
ourselves and in human thought and culture generally. In order to
avoid the errors of over-belief, modern critical thought deliberately
adopts a posture of under-belief and critical suspicion
toward every candidate for belief as possibly a projection of
human subjectivity (whether of others or of oneself). In other
words, its methodological maxim is “Doubt (that is, doubt subjectivity,
withhold investing oneself in the evident possibilities)
unless the candidate first proves itself worthy of belief through its
overcoming of one’s best efforts to doubt it.” As well, it means
“Withhold assent, and even withhold paying serious attention, to
any candidate for belief that does not submit itself to an impersonal
demonstration of its truth.” This is the critical project of
modernity. In theory, this method of critical doubt has always
been appealed to as the modern gauntlet that all serious claims to
knowledge must pass. In practice, however, those to which it is
particularly subjected are those candidates for belief that significantly
differ from mainstream intellectual opinion among modern
intellectuals—especially views and beliefs deriving from premodern
sources. In other words, almost never has it been directed
toward matters taken for granted among modernists–until recently,
that is.
Post-modernism’s critical method is basically the same thing,
except its methodological doubting is more radical and thoroughgoing,
supposedly more honest, for it doesn’t just call into
question new candidates for belief. It brings to the surface and
calls into question the taken-for-granted latent assumptions of
modernity itself, the faith of the tradition-governed practice of
modernism—e.g., the faith that objective truth can be attained,
and is being attained, through scientific and other forms of
rational inquiry (along with other undemonstrable presuppositions),
the confidence that justice and dignity for all can be, and
is being, realized through rationalized modern institutions, and
the hope that fraternity can be realized, and is being realized,
through modern education and by working cooperatively together
in independence of pre-modern practices, etc. (Note:
Never before post-modern critiques has it become so clear that
modernism, despite its presuming to repudiate tradition-based
thinking, consists in a tradition based on faith and structures of
authority that normally go without cognizance or acknowledgment.
Science, too, for that matter.) Not just withholding belief
but actively looking for reasons not to believe, post-modernism
critically suspects the latent, distorting subjectivity hidden behind
these apparently impersonal, explicitly rationalized programs.
Indeed, it doesn’t just withhold assent until they prove
themselves otherwise. It charges forward in the effort actively to
deconstruct them into their subjective components: gender bias,
will to power, sexual desire, ethnic domination, racial oppression,
social hegemony, social resentment (Nietzsche’s ressentiment),
etc. At times post-modern critiques, in their endeavor to demonstrate
that apparently objective understandings are nothing but
subjective constructions, are no less aggressively reductive than
the endeavor of hard-headed modernist materialists to demonstrate
that mental phenomena are nothing but electro-chemical
operations of the brain, or that of avid scientistic naturalists to
demonstrate that higher order cultural achievements (including
our pursuit of supposedly objective knowledge) are products of
mindless evolutionary selection. It would seem that all these
endeavors are of a piece.
In short, post-modernism amounts to modernism’s critical
project turned onto itself. One could without much distortion say
that post-modernism is a manifestation of latent contradictions
that have been at the core of modernism all along, except that few,
if any, thinkers were able to glimpse them until relatively recently
and perhaps none until Nietzsche had taken them with full
seriousness. Differently put, few—until recently—were in any
position to trace radically the contradictory implications of
modernism’s basic methodological assumptions. So, where does
this leave us? And what does it leave us with? Those of us initiated
into modernity and now, in one respect or another, into postmodernity
have difficulty believing in our beliefs and ideals,
including those of the Enlightenment. Our first initiation formed
a conscience in us that called into question our pre-modern
beliefs and ideals. And whereas most of us have embraced, or at
one time had come to embrace the beliefs and ideals (i.e., the faith)
of modernity—whether through how we were raised or through
our experience of higher education—our initiation into postmodernity
would reform our conscience to call into question
these modern beliefs and ideals. It is now a serious question for
many of us how we can with intellectual integrity affirm wholeheartedly
any of these beliefs and ideals at all. In affirming and
pursuing them passionately, given this formation of our intellectual
conscience, we cannot help but suspect that we may be
deceiving ourselves. This leaves us with what seems to be an
inescapable dilemma. Either affirm one’s basic beliefs and ideals
in a way that seals them off from critical reflection (i.e., dogmatically
in a close-minded fundamentalist, absolutist way) or hesitantly
affirm them in a way that so qualifies them that they are
evacuated of substance (as in “These are my beliefs and ideals, and
I realize they are not yours, and I want you to know that I respect
you affirming yours, just as you should respect me affirming
mine”). In effect, this latter alternative is the relativist “truth for
me” and “truth for you”—having done away, for all practical
purposes, with truth in any absolute sense. The dilemma, then,
appears to be either dogmatic absolutism or relativism, with no
middle ground. If you don’t yet think that this is the position in
which deconstructive post-modernism places a person, then simply
ask your typical undergraduate students. The deeper question,
however, is “Are these the only alternatives?” Is there any other way
forward in which our deepest convictions might be whole-heartedly
affirmed with intellectual integrity—fully realizing that we are finite
and fallible? Is there hope for an integral reformation of our
intellectual conscience?
If this is the critical orientation, then what is a post-critical
orientation? And what does it take to make the shift from the one
to the other?
There are many aspects to the shift which are not easy to
summarize in a brief compass. The most central of these can be
captured briefly in terms of a shift from a priority of emphasis
upon methodological skepticism to a priority of emphasis upon
methodological faith—but, please note, in a special sense. The
former grants priority to active skepticism toward what access
to truth we (and anyone else) might be supposed to have in our
own persons. It suspiciously regards such presumed access as
fraught with “subjectivity” (the projecting proclivities of our self
that are liable to distort, bias, and obscure the reality of things).
It demands that we distance ourselves from the subject matter
and relate to it in a strictly detached, depersonalized way. To the
contrary, the latter—a post-critical orientation—grants priority
to trust in that personal access, motivating us to draw near to
the subject matter in a manner that will enable us to become
acquainted with it and bring it to light. Differently put, the shift
is from detached, self-critical reserve to active, first-personal
indwelling and exploration. In words Polanyi uses to describe
this aspect of the shift in Personal Knowledge, it is from a
detached, “non-committal orientation” in our cognitive endeavors
to a “committal orientation.” (“Committal” here does not
mean commitment to a given statement of belief or to some
specific outcome but rather a passionate personal commitment
to pursing the truth concerning the subject matter in question,
truth as transcending and never fully grasped by any particular
explicit rendering.) It is crucially important to realize that this
shift is key to comprehending the full significance of what
Polanyi meant by tacit knowing—namely, entering into a relationship
of rapport in one’s own person with what is known. It
isn’t just coming to have a different understanding and awareness
of what is involved in our knowing. It calls us to enter more
profoundly into our knowing of things. The emphasis is on
coming into a relationship of deepening acquaintance and
rapport with the known, versus withholding oneself from it.
It is easy to mistake what the shift from methodological
skepticism to methodological faith means (so I have found in
attempting to explain it to students and to colleagues). The
methodological faith to which Polanyi gives priority is not at all a
standpoint of uncritical credulity or subjectivism. To many it
seems so because the taken-for-granted critical perspective of
modernity induces us to imagine ourselves not in an active
exploratory relationship to reality but as confronted with competing
explicit candidates for belief, which we are given critically to
doubt or uncritically to believe. In such a situation, Polanyi’s
proposal of methodological faith seems on the surface to counsel
uncritical belief. But the shift that Polanyi proposes opens up—
beyond deciding between explicit representations (and beyond
the sterile alternatives of critical doubt and uncritical belief)—a
whole other dimension and a whole other response: the tacit,
unarticulated dimension of the reality which these representations
purport to map (which Polanyi maintains is essentially
inexhaustible), a dimension of reality to which we have cognitive
access only as we reach out to explore it for ourselves and in our
own persons in a-critical (neither critical nor uncritical) methodological
faith.6 The crucial thing to recognize is that we are blind
and insensible to this dimension and to this response apart from
the methodological faith which ventures in one’s own person to
find hidden unarticulated truth. The methodological faith in
question is thus directed not to explicit candidates for belief
(even ones we happen to come up with ourselves) but to our
access to this dimension and our investigative forays into it—
i.e., to truth as transcendental: as apprehensible (in part) yet
also transcending our own best efforts to render it explicit. As
well, it is directed to the access that other knowers have to this
dimension, to encouragement and trust in them to investigate it
along with us, in order to uncover aspects that we might
otherwise overlook and hopefully to confirm the insights which
we will have ourselves received.
The methodological skepticism that more or less defines the
critical orientation of modern thought, then, is marked by critical
suspicion toward subjectivity as such—not only toward bias,
preconception, prejudice, etc., but also toward the possibility that
truth might come to light through personal relationship and
involvement. In Personal Knowledge, Polanyi calls this fundamental
strategy radically into question, contending that adoption of
methodological skepticism across the board (at least where it is
most seriously adopted and consistently followed through) represses,
interferes with, and in some cases actually debilitates, the
personal fiduciary powers that enable us to transcend the distortions
of subjectivity and credulousness and achieve contact with
objective reality. To the contrary, a post-critical philosophical
orientation, fully aware of the inescapable fallibility of these
powers (an awareness gained in large measure from the insights
produced by the modern critical tradition), nevertheless recognizes
that these powers of methodological believing (i.e., of personal
indwelling, of following up and integrating clues to hidden truth, of
struggling to articulate what is only vaguely sensed, etc.) are
ultimately our only resort—being a wellspring of all genuine
discovery and creativity.7 Whereas the critical philosophical
orientation follows the strategy Doubt, unless there is good reason
to believe, a post-critical philosophical orientation adopts the
inverse methodological strategy Believe (that is, believe in this
quest for truth in one’s own person) unless, and until, there arises
good reason to doubt (that is, doubt toward the current mode of
investing oneself in seeking). In other words, trust, indwell, venture,
put yourself into it, until there arises good reason to
withdraw and withhold yourself. Its priority is more upon seeking
truth—truth yet unknown or incompletely understood—than
avoiding error, more upon finding meaning than avoiding deception.
To attain truth one must, again and again, risk being wrong.
The critical strategy is to minimize the risk of being wrong. The
post-critical strategy realizes that minimizing the risk in this way
maximizes the loss of truth and meaning.8
A post-critical orientation of reflective thought is characterBeyond
Post-Modernism 81
ized by methodological believing no less than methodological
doubting, with priority placed on the former, by empathetic
exploration of perspectives beyond one’s own no less than critical
suspicion, reaching out and indwelling no less than withdrawal
and detachment, by venturing into the unknown, “pouring oneself”
into the particulars of a problem in pursuit of a hidden
coherence, and investing oneself in a quest to discover and bring
to light some important truth no less than withholding oneself.
The latter of each of these pairings continues to have its place. A
post-critical orientation is not a reversion to an uncritical orientation.
But methodological believing is given a relatively higher or
first priority: less absence than presence, less an absenting of the
self of the knower from what is known than an appropriate,
responsible drawing near and becoming present of knower to
known in however partial, aspectual, and incomplete a way.
Thereby, instead of seeking approximation to some universal,
‘objective,’ depersonalized knower—formally indistinguishable
from every other ‘objective’ knower from having suppressed all
that situates and incarnates her knowing as unique and distinct
from that of other knowers–the knower forthrightly discloses and
acknowledges the situatedness, partiality, and fallibility of her
knowing in the world alongside other knowers while nevertheless
affirming her findings with universal intent.9 She does so in the
faith that this situatedness does not separate her from reality—as
both modernity and deconstructive post-modernity have supposed—
but, when taken up actively in quest of truth, connects her
with it. Her knowing, her finite situated being, her person, on the
one hand, and her connection with the known, her contact with
the known, on the other, are inseparable. Knowing thus conceived
is incarnate, in the world, in relationship and rapport with what is
known. Thereby, as well, the knower becomes knowable, or rather
is knowable, in her knowing. The knower is not located (isolated)
in some Cartesian discarnate interior—nor in the neural networks
of her cerebral cortex—inaccessible to other fellow-knowers,
but, via empathetic indwelling, commonsensically alongside other
persons, knowable and known in her knowing. The tacit dimension
of human knowing which Polanyi post-critically brings to our
attention encompasses all this.
It is important to realize that Polanyi does not counsel us to
give up being critical. He is counseling us to give up being
inappropriately critical, to give up being inappropriately distant
and impersonal when our being personally and vulnerably present
is called for, to give up adherence to methodological suspicion
and doubt as the supreme test for all candidates for belief. This
criterion, when taken by itself, leaves out of consideration several
crucial factors. First, we need good reason to doubt no less than
good reason to believe. Second, our most fundamental presuppositions
in a given area of inquiry are incapable of being justified
to the satisfaction of skeptical doubt, and so must be accepted for
that inquiry acritically (neither critically nor uncritically) on
methodological faith. In this respect, the modern tradition of
methodological doubt is itself ironically animated by an unacknowledged
acritical methodological faith—including the unacknowledged
faith that truth to the contrary of what is being
doubted will somehow come to light through the process of
doubting. Third, whereas critical doubt is a distancing strategy,
involving the removal of our personal presence in and with the
matter under consideration, there are many matters that would
never be known and, in many cases, understood without our
personal presence, participation, and involvement in order to
understand, bring to the surface, and discover them—e.g., our
knowledge of other persons both within our culture and within
alien cultures, and qualitative dimensions of a subject matter that
would be otherwise lost to us by remaining at a distance and
focusing merely on, say, quantitative measures. Some evidence is
not evident at all apart from this kind of involvement and, in many
cases, specialized training in learning how to perceive it, to
develop the sensibility to apprehend it. Feminist epistemology
has appropriately called this “connected knowing,” as distinct
from “separate knowing.”10
Polanyi is not alone in helping us grope our way to a post-critical
intellectual ethos. There are a number of recent and contemporary
thinkers who have pondered at length on what is at the root
of the problematic character of modernism-culminating-in-postmodernism
and who, pretty much independently, have begun to
converge on similar assessments of the problem and suggestions
of how one might begin to move beyond it to an ethos beyond postmodernism.
11
Not all of them speak explicitly of seeking to foster the
emergence of an intellectual ethos beyond post-modernism,
though some do. Not all use the same words and phrases to
identify it. Some identify with a positive or constructive side of
post-modernism. Some have chosen to use the phrase “constructive
post-modernism” or “ecological post-modernism” to refer to
it. Others speak of “beyond” or “after” post-modernism, and
accordingly use such acronyms as BPM or APM. Still others,
perhaps most of them, identify with a single feature or aspect of
a post-critical orientation only and emphasize that feature alone—
as in communitarianism, the new traditionalism, caring or connected
thinking as a counterbalance and complement to critical or
separated thinking, and disciplined empathy as a distinctive mode
of inquiry and knowing. While each of these features has significant
value, it is important to recognize that they are all contributing
to the collective emergence of a new intellectual ethos that
encompasses them all. All call for a radical reworking, either
directly or indirectly, of our conceptions of reason and rationality,
of objectivity and subjectivity, of self and other, of experience
and language, of faith and doubt, and other very basic categories
that, they contend, have been fundamentally misconstrued or
impoverished within the modern conceptual repertoire. It is too
soon to say that there is a full consensus among them, especially
about what specific thing or things need fixing and how they
should be fixed, though many would say there is something akin
to a consensus emerging among them about such things. It is
important to say, however, that they are not all talking together,
and many of them seem not to know of the existence of each
other’s work. I’m talking here about something that for many is
still in process of emerging and slowly being articulated among
many thinkers in different places.
Sticking primarily with Polanyi’s understanding, however,
there are several features characteristic of a post-critical intellectual
ethos that are shared by many of these thinkers—features
that are worth mentioning here.
(1) Methodological faith. What Polanyi means by methodological
faith at its heart is a distinctive kind of personal participation
and involvement in inquiry. It is not constituted by a
certain content or set of beliefs or commitment to a certain
outcome to the inquiry. Rather is it a mode of generically investing
and trusting ourselves to the process of inquiry and to any
preparation requisite for the inquiry to succeed, and an opening
of ourselves to whatever surprises the inquiry may turn up. It
essentially involves a movement of tacit integration, of reaching
out to make sense of the whole of the matters in question. It
includes as well methodological reliance upon (i.e., trying out)
certain assumptions that might seem contrary to what we are
accustomed to relying on in order to follow up the promise they
intimate of a new, more coherent, and profounder understanding
of a subject matter. We often have to get personally involved and
connected with a thing in ways appropriate to the subject matter
and for our purposes in order to come to know and appreciate it
for what it is. In that sense the operating maxim of methodological
faith is believe, unless and until one has a good reason to doubt—
and we owe it to ourselves and each other to be alert to and ready
to take into account any good reason to doubt that comes along. The
faith of methodological faith is not blind, nor is it an assertion of
some presumed state of affairs. It is a way of coming to apprehend
and know something, a means of reaching out to apprehend more
clearly what is only dimly glimpsed. It is, to be sure a risk that may
turn out to be wrong, but what it fallibly apprehends is not
otherwise apprehendable. In any case, the point is not to replace
methodological doubt with methodological faith, but to bring
something that is and has been out of balance back into balance
with its complement, realizing that all inquiry—including
modernism’s unacknowledged trust in methodological doubt—is
irreducibly reliant on methodological faith.
(2) Fallibility. If all of our inquiry and knowing is in some
sense based upon elements of methodological faith (e.g., basic
presuppositions, certain strategies of inquiry, a traditional practice
to which we have been apprenticed, confident articulateness
in the language we speak, trust in our embodied ability to move
about and manipulate things, etc.), that cannot be explicitly
justified so as to remove every possible occasion for doubt then
all our supposed knowledge and understanding of things is fallible
and the modern quest for an infallible ground of knowing is
nonsense. The deconstructive post-modernist concludes from
this that knowledge is therefore impossible. Given this inveterate
fallibility, we could be wrong in one or more respects, perhaps
even comprehensively. If we can be wrong, then how can we be
said to know? A post-critical conception says that, knowledge
does not require certainty. Justification, as needed, only requires
meeting reasonable doubt, not unreasonable doubt, not doubt for
doubt’s sake. The radical skeptic does not need to be convinced,
though he does have a point: our strivings are based on a faith that
cannot be eliminated. Insofar as a person’s claim to know is
accompanied by reasons good enough to counter reasonable
doubt, though they be not absolutely conclusive, the burden of
proof is shifted off of the claimant to the skeptic.
(3) A partial and perspectival grasp of things. Just as methodological
faith introduces to our knowing ventures a fallibility that
must be acknowledged and cannot be eliminated, so also it
renders our grasp of things partial and perspectival—indeed,
forever incomplete. Acknowledgement of the methodological
faith-component of our knowing calls attention to how we always
come at the subject matter in question from some particular
certain angle of approach (both literally and figuratively), a
certain perspective on, and mode of access to, the subject matter
that differs from the perspective of other inquirers whose methodological faith may differ more or less from our own. We each
come at it simultaneously from different angles of approach and
accordingly are in a position to pick up on different aspects of it.
But contrary to the pessimistic picture often articulated among
post-modernists, it is possible to communicate a great deal
among persons of different perspectives about the world in
common between us. We are not hermetically sealed off from
each other within Cartesian inner mental worlds. If it were so, we
couldn’t make sense of differing perspectives on something in the
first place. On the contrary, we are incarnate knowers, ranged
alongside one another, concerned with things in a world common
among us. Precisely in light of that circumstance we are able to
recognize that each of us comes at things from a different angle,
constituted not just by the placement of one’s body, but also by
the mind-set and subculture (including language) that we bring
with us. Remarkably, we can be and are aware of this at the very
moment we are seeing things from our own perspective. (This
does not mean that all points of view are equivalent in worth and
validity; some give better access than others, as can be learned by
trying them out.) Moreover, we can, through the practice of
disciplined empathy, learn much of what the other person is able
to perceive of the matter in question between us, and confirm that
we have indeed learned that. This means that (1) we each can
become aware that there are aspects of the subject matter in
question (between us) that escape our current direct apprehension,
and (2) that we can learn of those other aspects from each
other and so enrich our comprehension of the subject matter. We
may well learn that an alternative perspective from the one we
currently occupy would afford us a much better view, and so we
may end up shifting our point of view.
(4) A new, deeper understanding of common sense. Recognition
of the partial, perspectival grasp we have of things, in turn,
brings to light still other factors inherent in a post-critical
intellectual ethos—namely, our incarnateness (though not imprisonment)
in a particular point of view (from which we can shift
into and explore other points of view); consequently, the possibility of being known by others in our knowing from a given point of
view; the fact that we are here together, respectively ranged about
matters in common among us, each of us, perceiving and interpreting
it from different points of view simultaneously; the
possibility of coming to know and learn from points of view other
than our own through disciplined empathy; and therewith the
possibility of mutual recognition (i.e., the possibility, say, of your
recognizing me in my knowing and of my simultaneous recognition
of your recognition of me, and vice versa). In different words,
mutual recognition is the possibility of your seeing that I see the
same thing that you see while, simultaneously, I see that you see
it too. This miracle of mutual recognition at the root of common
sense making is one of the more important things that a postcritical
orientation opens up, though it has been rarely noticed or
acknowledged.12
(5) Reality transcending any one point of view, yet accessible
and knowable (in part) by each. If and insofar as our knowing of
things is perspectival and we recognize that fact, then what it is
that we know—what we take to be real—is thereby both in certain
respects present to and accessible via each of our perspectives
and, in other respects, also transcendent to each of our perspectives.
It is transcendent insofar as it is accessible in different
respects to another perspective than the respects in which it is
accessible to our own (and vice versa). We can learn something
about these other respects through the process of disciplined
empathy and, in some cases, by actually shifting our own perspective
to take into account aspects that previously we failed to
notice. Moreover, we are dimly aware of an indefinite multiplicity
of still other, possible perspectives through which the thing in
question may yet be accessible in still further (though for us quite
indefinite) respects. That is to say, taking this perspectival nature
of our own knowing into account, the awareness grows that the
reality we are capable of knowing has aspects that inexhaustibly
escape our current awareness, even if we were to take each of our
respective perspectival knowings into account. The marvelous
thing about this is that this transcendent character of reality can
thereby be recognized (cognitively grasped) as having this inexhaustible
character, though explaining how we do so presents
quite a challenge (no less than the marvelous phenomenon of
mutual recognition does as well).
(6) New understandings of objectivity and subjectivity. This
transcendent character of reality implies a resolution to how
objectivity (and subjectivity) might be reconceived in a postcritical
intellectual ethos. At its root, objectivity means what
pertains to the object itself, above and beyond any distorting
contributions that might come from the knowing subject, the
knower. Accordingly, subjectivity in this respect means distortions
in an apprehension of the object known contributed by the
knowing subject, due to prejudice, preconception, bias, etc. The
modernist conception of objectivity does not rest with this
understanding, for it identifies objectivity with a distancing
strategy that would leave human subjectivity decisively behind
and so attain “the view from nowhere,” a perspective that would
supposedly be the same for all and identifiable with none. In
practice this is supposed to be accomplished by coming up with
an impersonal, strictly formalized set of propositions (“objective
knowledge”) representing the object in a way that will be the same
for all. (Subjectivity, accordingly, has been identified with anything
that cannot be so rendered, anything that does not adhere
to this distancing strategy.) The trouble is that this modern
strategy to achieve objectivity, as post-modernists point out,
never escapes being the point of view of some persons in particular—
usually seeking to exert power by its means—that is to say,
it remains one point of view among others but unable to acknowledge
itself as such. More often than not, it is then hegemonically
imposed upon others as the way things objectively are. By way of
contrast, within a post-critical ethos, objectivity is reconceived, in
a manner closer to the root meaning, to mean drawing closer in
our understanding to the object itself in its transcendence beyond
any one perspective. In this manner, objectivity and universality
are in intent commonsensically achieved through progressively
taking into account what can be accessed through the indefinite
multiplicity of different perspectives relevant to the object.
Accordingly, subjectivity, post-critically conceived, will be anything
that hinders this convergence and integration of perspectives.
(Think of this in direct contrast to our contemporary
experience of the insular specialization that takes place within
academic disciplines, where objectivity is still for the most part
mistakenly supposed to require this insularity.)
(7) Personal transcendence. Now if objectivity in knowledge is
reconceived to involve a progressive integration of what can be
known of a given matter from the indefinite multiplicity of
different relevant perspectives, then not only is a disciplined
empathetic exploration of other perspectives requisite to objectivity,
but persons who dedicate themselves to doing so responsibly
may be said thereby to transcend their own subjectivity. This
self-transcendence achieved through responsible personal involvement
and judgment is what led Polanyi to distinguish what
is personal from what is subjective in cognitive matters, and why
he titled his magnum opus, Personal Knowledge. Responsible
personal judgment is both objective and personal at the same
time. One could say, then, that all knowledge is a human construction,
as post-modernists would typically put it, but not all constructions
are subjective; some can and should be asserted, as
Polanyi put it, with universal intent and may then rightly be
judged objectively true—i.e., judged that they actually connect
with and engage objective reality in its transcendence. This, of
course, does not mean that such assertions and judgments are
infallible or that they are more complete or less perspectival than
they in fact are. A proper humility, an avoidance of presumption,
and an owning up to one’s own fallible and perspectival hold on
the world as fallible and perspectival is, of course, more requisite
than ever—and more clear why it must be so.
(8) All knowing as a “from-to stretch,” reaching out to achieve
universal truth: As is clear from what has been said already, in a
post-critical intellectual ethos, all knowing is incarnately situated-
indeed, it is through and through fraught with its tacit roots
in a particular time, place, body, personal history, subculture(s),
language, and tradition-governed practice of knowing. I say
‘tradition-governed practice of knowing’ to call attention to the
way the tacit dimension of our knowing, as Polanyi makes clear,
is developed and shaped through a process of mentoring and
apprenticeship embodied in particular traditions, which are never
simply made up of explicit beliefs passed down from generation to
generation. Such traditions are always more than the explicit
beliefs they happen to transmit; they are, in addition, each a way
of knowing the world from within a certain perspective. I have just
finished saying that at times persons transcend their rootedness
in a given tradition’s perspective to connect with objective reality
that is manifest in indefinitely multiple ways to other points of
view than that defined by the situation in which these persons are
(and may well remain) rooted. The key thing is that persons who
realize such transcendence have not allowed the confines of that
situation to dictate reality, but rather have relied upon that
situational rootedness in such a way that it grants them access to
a reality (and to other points of view onto that reality) that
transcends what was directly accessible to, and in, that situation.
The same sub cultural tradition, a traditional practice of knowing,
thus can serve either as something negative, narrow, and confining
(regarded critically from without, in a focal, exteriorized
manner), or as something positive—an opening up, and a liberating
thing (regarded post-critically from within)—depending on
how it is up-taken and lived out.
Differently put, particular situations in which persons might
be said to be parochially rooted provide them with a map of
reality, a map, say, of a certain territory. Persons who simply
accept the map they inherit do not transcend the subjectivity of
their subculture. They may be said to know a certain part of
reality, but only certain aspects from a certain perspective. Or
more strictly, they may be said to take at second hand such a
knowledge. But it is likely they will have little idea of its partial and
perspectival character and perhaps be unaware of its fallibility.
On the other hand, the person who transcends her given subjectivity
does not leave her situatedness and given map behind, but
instead takes it as a clue to something much bigger, which she
progressively supplements as her inquiry proceeds, taking in
more and more of what she learns about the territory itself from
clues found in other maps and other points of view. The goal is a
knowledge of what is so, of what is objectively real, for all
(universally), even though most others may not transcend beyond
their own respective partial and perspectival views. Note that the
from-to, contingent stretch is from what is situated and local—
the clues and intimations of meaning and reality which we rely on
to make sense of things—to what is objective and universal. All
knowing is a fallible venture toward the objective and universal
from—while it is still rooted within—what nevertheless is local
and particular.
(9) Knowing as relational acquaintance. It should be obvious
by what I have said so far that a post-critical paradigm of what
constitutes knowledge has shifted considerably from possession
of a set of formal propositions that are supposed to be an accurate
impersonal representation, some kind of impersonal mapping, of
an independently given objective reality. It has become an incarnate,
mindbodily acquaintance-relationship in one’s own person
with the reality in question, supplemented by successively taking
into account other relevant points of view. Derivative from this
acquaintance-relationship, one will have, or can provide, a map
of that reality.
Many post-modernists speak of our being caught in the trap
of language and having no possibility of relating to what lies
outside of language, outside of what has been already ‘objectified’
(i.e., categorized and pigeonholed, made ‘not other’) in terms of
a given language. On the contrary, the way one connects with
reality in its ‘otherness’ beyond language is precisely through our
tacit mindbodily acquaintance with it. Insofar as this is so,
knowing (emphasizing the verbal-active character of knowledge,
in its cognate form, rather than the passive connotations of the
noun knowledge) may be said to be primarily tacit and rooted in
tacit knowing (tacit here meaning non-, or not presently, explicit).
This is a major theme of Polanyi’s writing, which demonstrates
how this is so throughout the natural sciences and not only in nonscientific
fields of knowing, in contrast to the modernist picture
of scientific knowing as wholly detached and impersonal. Even in
the abstract and abstruse realms of quantum physics on the one
hand, and astrophysics on the other, we become acquainted with
these realms by means of our bodies assimilating to themselves (to
our embodied self) the instruments of scientific knowing and wellconfirmed
scientific theories as instrumental extensions of the
reach of our embodied knowing.
(10) The knowing body as subject rather than object. The body
of the knoweris reconceived not as a focus of attention, objectified
through scientific knowing, but the body as subject both
already in and responsively attuned to the world. And more: the
body as ground or basis of our more personal subject as we
develop and mature through our acquisition of language and
other forms of human culture. This sense and experience of the
body as subject has been extensively explored and has been well
described through the work of phenomenology in the twentieth
century, and especially through the work of Maurice Merleau-
Ponty and work inspired by him. Polanyi’s work largely converges
with this work, especially that of Merleau-Ponty. The body thus
understood is the primary means of our presence to and with
things other than ourselves, with the help of various cultural
means to extend its reach and sophisticate its powers of representation.
(11) Creative powers of novel articulation. Some post-modernists
have argued that human experience is so thoroughly imbued
with what is conceived to be the determinate confines of our
language and culture that there is no sense in which we ever
experience what lies outside of language and culture. But this is
simply false—false for two reasons. First, upon the basis of our
experience of being embodied human subjects in the world that we
share with all human beings, regardless of culture—both prelinguistically
and linguistically—we do succeed in making sense in
common with persons of language and culture vastly different
from our own, reaching beyond the limited horizon of our
subculture and language. Second, as explained by the philosopher-
psychologist Eugene Gendlin (whose thinking, Gendlin affirms,
is fully consonant with Polanyi’s thinking)—it is from our
as yet inarticulate felt bodily sense of things that all new creative
articulations emerge, from solutions to psychological conflicts, to
poetic images, to scientific theories. It is precisely in such
experiences that novel linguistic usages and meanings arise, and
it is part of the genius of human language that it is open to novel
articulations. Our lived body-subject is not a determinate thing;
from within, it is an opened-out way of being present to things and
other persons and of responsively interacting with them. As well,
it is the ground of all saying, and all doing through what we say.
(11) A vertical, qualitative dimension to things. Finally, a postcritical
intellectual ethos, through its understanding of connected/
relational knowing by acquaintance, opens out upon a
knowing of things that is oriented less toward the goals of
prediction and control—such as we find in the technological uses
of scientific knowledge—and more toward contemplation and the
appreciation of things for their own sake. This is a knowing that
not only includes a qualitative, valuational, or normative dimension;
it is oriented to discovering the intrinsic worth and meaning
that can be found in things and persons and situations. It is
oriented to discovering and acknowledging realizations of normative
value that we call achievements in every level of functioning
of living organisms up through the inherent dignity in human
beings (perhaps higher mammals as well) to moral greatness in
persons we rightly honor and revere. There is a vertical, qualitative
dimension in things, particularly in living organisms—of
lower and higher, of lesser and greater worth, of levels of
progressive emergence and irreducible wholeness and complexity—
to which a merely quantitative analysis of the sort we find in
much of science is oblivious, if not blind. A post-critical ethos is
one for which this dimension of things can be re-acknowledged
and re-appropriated, and one in which a greater sensibility for
apprehending can be cultivated.
This brings us finally to one of the issues with which we
started: how is it possible to wholeheartedly affirm with intellectual
integrity the transcendent values and ideals that impassion
us? So far as we re-conceive some of our most basic conceptions—
our values—in a post-critical frame of reference, a sensitivity
to the problematic subjectivity that can corrupt and manipulate
them that we have gained through both modern and postmodern
criticism need not disable us from wholeheartedly reaffirming
these values and the higher level of “reality” that Polanyi
assigns to them. Truth, justice, beauty, integrity, human dignity,
fraternity, liberty, and the like are still—and rightly—as impassioning
as ever.
Dale Cannon
Western Oregon University
NOTES
- Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958). - At a crucial point in Personal Knowledge (265ff), Polanyi
identifies the turn to a post-critical philosophy as a recovery of
balance between our cognitive powers of belief on the one hand
and doubt (i.e., “demonstrable knowledge”) on the other, specifically
a recovery from the state of imbalance wrought by the
critical movement’s rejection of the one in favor of exclusive
confidence in the other. The path to recovery of balance for
Polanyi lies in a re-appropriation of Augustine’s insight that belief
is the mind’s cognitive power for anticipating knowledge as a gift
of grace: “nisi credideritis, non intelligitis” [“Unless ye believe, ye
shall not understand.”] - See the explanatory online essay, “Constructive
Postmodernism” by John B. Cobb: <http://www.religiononline.
org/showarticle.asp?title=2220> - Personal Knowledge, 265–66.
- The neologism “mindbodily” was coined by William H.
Poteat in his Polanyian Meditations: In Search of a Post-Critical
Logic (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1985). - See Polanyi’s careful differentiation of a-critical from both
critical and uncritical in Personal Knowledge, p. 264 and following. - See Personal Knowledge, pp. 264–268.
- I wish to acknowledge here my indebtedness to a discussion
of these matters by William James. See, in particular, his well
known essay, “The Will to Believe,” widely anthologized—e.g., in
Essays in Pragmatism, ed. by Alburey Castell (New York: Hafner,
1952), 88–109. In many respects, but by no means all, James’
thinking converges with Polanyi’s. - See what Polanyi says about “universal intent” as distinct
from universality in The Tacit Dimension (Garden City, NY:
Doubleday, 1966), 78, and then in Personal Knowledge, 300–303. - See volume 34, no.1 (2007–8) of Tradition and Discovery:
The Polanyi Society Periodical, which is devoted to exploring the
convergence of the work of Blythe Clinchy, one of the co-authors
of Women’s Ways of Knowing: The Development of Self, Voice, and
Mind (1986; repr. New York: Basic Books, 1997) and a co-editor
of Knowledge, Difference, and Power: Essays Inspired by Women’s
Ways of Knowing (New York: Basic Books, 1996), with the
thought of Michael Polanyi. - I have in mind such thinkers as Charles Taylor, Eugene
Gendlin, Blythe Clinchy, Benjamin DeMott, Parker Palmer,
Stephen Toulmin, Alaisdair MacIntyre, Hans Georg Gadamer,
Jurgen Habermas, Richard Bernstein, William H. Poteat, Robert
Bellah, Bruce Wilshire, E. F. Schumacher, Maurice Merleau-
Ponty, Paul Ricoeur, Ludwig Wittgenstein (in his later work),
Hannah Arendt, and Christopher Alexander. - This articulation of common sense I have drawn from the
work of Hannah Arendt, particularly from her magnum opus, The
Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958).
