Abstract

. Michael Polanyi’s distinction between the indicative meaning of scientific statements and the symbolic and metaphorical meaning of art and religion, presented in Meaning, is based on an abstraction from concrete experience and betrays an inadequate understanding of religious discourse, particularly the discourse of the Judaeo-Christian tradition. In fact, Polanyi’s vision in Personal Knowledge, which analyses the priority of personal action to all achievements of explication, seems either to be denied or forgotton by the positions taken in Meaning. Hence, the argument here is that Meaning is a deviation from Personal Knowledge and a step away from the resources necessary to grasp adequately the logic of religious discourse