This book is a volume in the Penn Press Anniversary Collection. To mark its 125th anniversary in 2015, the University of Pennsylvania Press rereleased more than 1,100 titles from Penn Press's distinguished backlist from 1899-1999 that had fallen out of print. Spanning an entire century, the Anniversary Collection offers peer-reviewed scholarship in a wide range of subject areas.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Democracy, Spirit, and RevitalizationWalter B. Gulick (bio)The assumptions of democracy as an associational ethos of vulnerable life are, first, that we don't already know how best to order our common life and, second, that we don't know what the abstract ideals of empathy, emancipation, and equity entail in the concrete.—Michael Hogue1In American Immanence: Democracy for an Uncertain World, Michael S. Hogue grounds his proposal for a political theology (...) in a critique of American exceptionalism and its supportive "redeemer symbolic."2 In the Anthropocene era, Hogue states, American exceptionalism "legitimates the extraction of diverse forms of value and justifies the externalization of diverse costs" (29) with unconscionable costs to the natural environment and international justice. As indicated in the passage quoted above, Hogue's reaction to the rigid assumptions supportive of American exceptionalism is to offer a humble acknowledgement of political fallibility coupled with what he terms "a theopolitics of resilient democracy" (184; see also 3–6).My concern in this essay is largely practical. I will focus on discerning what intellectual, emotional, and communal resources might be drawn upon to further develop and actually effect the needed changes that Hogue so ably points out. Relatedly, I will inquire into who the most likely candidates are to devote energy to the reconstruction of social structures and practices so that they express values that Americans at their best uphold. Finally, I will reflect upon the role that spiritual ideals and communal practices might play in energizing effective democratic action. [End Page 5]I. Hogue's Critical and Constructive TasksHogue's overriding interest is to outline an epistemic/axiological/environmental/political stance that does not give rise to the various sorts of injustices and dysfunctions that mark the Anthropocene era, especially our allegiance to policies that eventuate in what he calls "climate wickedness." The alternative vision he embraces develops pragmatic naturalism as a method of inquiry and exposition. His reflections are especially indebted to the thought of Dewey, James, and Whitehead (78–82). During a time when e-words are normally associated with forms of electronic communication, Hogue offers instead two trios of e-words with another sort of significance—one that signifies a stance he wishes to overcome and one that communicates what he hopes to achieve. Our current era is unfortunately in thrall, he says, to extraction, externalization, and exception, whereas what we should strive for is a society marked by empathy, emancipation, and equitability. Well put. He presupposes that democratic governance, deeply embedded in American history, ought to serve as the vehicle for achieving what the positive set of e-words promotes. To this end, Hogue quotes appreciatively from Dewey's article, "Democracy is Radical": Democracy "is radical because it requires great change in existing social institutions, economic, legal and cultural" (170). This understanding of democracy slumbers now; what might it take to reawaken it? And if reawakened, what changes might be made to establish the more nearly equitable political influence that is basic to the promise of democracy?Hogue, recognizing in good pragmatic fashion the importance of consequential change, states, "In contrast to foundationalist commitments to antecedents and precedents, pragmatic naturalism commits to a prospective concern with consequents" (80). Foundational commitments to antecedents may certainly impede needed change, but surely attention to the historical events and practices that gave rise to current problems is needed to avoid repeating previous errors. Hogue refers to Whitehead's vision of social symbolism, suggesting that "social change can be catalyzed by the improvised revision of existing symbolic repertoires or the innovative formation or subversive interjection of new symbols" (99). I'm not fully convinced by Whitehead's claim. I suspect that many of our social problems are rooted below the linguistic level in an array of affective issues that elude symbolic adjustment. New strategies are needed to counter the prevalence of fear and resentment in society as promoted for political and commercial reasons and tied to Hogue's strongly voiced recognition that we live in an uncertain world.Here is my understanding of how Hogue both frames our current social and cultural situation and what he says might begin to remediate these circumstances. [End Page... (shrink)

Although there are distinctly American artists-Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, Grandma Moses, Thomas Hart Benton, and Andy Warhol, for example-very little attention has been devoted to formulating any distinctively American characteristics of aesthetic judgment and practice. This volume takes a step in this direction, presenting an introductory essay on the possibility of such a distinctly American tradition, and a collection of essays exploring particular examples from a variety of angles. Some of the essays in this collection extend pragmatist and process insights (...) about the important place aesthetics has in molding and assessing experience. Other essays examine the place of American aesthetics in relation to such particular forms of art as painting, literature, music, and film. Three essays attend to the aesthetic aspects of a flourishing life. In each of the essays, American aesthetics is understood to arise out of deeply felt personal, historical, and cultural backgrounds. Consequently, not only are such relatively abstract notions as harmony, fit, elegance, proportion, and the like involved in aesthetic judgment, but also religious, political, and social factors become embroiled in aesthetic discernment. Thus the ongoing pattern of American aesthetics is shown to be distinguishable from such other varieties of aesthetic thought as analytic aesthetics, New Criticism, and postmodern approaches to aesthetics. (shrink)

Are there aspects of human intelligence that artificial intelligence cannot emulate? Harry Collins uses a distinction between tacit aspects of knowing, which cannot be digitized, and explicit aspects, which can be, to formulate an answer to this question. He postulates three purported areas of the tacit and argues that only “collective tacit knowing” cannot be adequately digitized. I argue, first, that Collins’s approach rests upon problematic Cartesian assumptions—particularly his claim that animal knowing is strictly deterministic and, thus, radically different from (...) human knowing. I offer evidence that human linguistic intelligence depends upon embodied forms of animal intelligence. Second, I suggest the development of deep-learning algorithms means that Collins’s mimesis assumption is no longer appropriate; equivalent accomplishment of goals is what counts. However, persons must realize and integrate many goals and also deal with failures; a general-purpose AI capable of integrating all the needs and goals of human existence resists development. Third, I explain how Michael Polanyi’s understanding of tacit knowing, quite different than Collins’s concept of the tacit, exemplifies features that are missing in contemporary AI. I make use of evolutionary theory, studies of animal intelligence, biological insights, individual construction of meaning, and notions of human responsibility to argue for the existence of three categories that distinguish human from artificial intelligence. (shrink)

A central aim of Michael Polanyi’s philosophy is to demonstrate the many ways in which human existence is meaningful to counter the nihilistic and positivistic accounts that contributed to the world wars and totalitarian governments in the twentieth century. Yet Polanyi’s references to various sorts of meaning is suggestive rather than systematic and coherent. The objective of this essay is to show the relationship between the different aspects of meaning by viewing their emergence in cosmological perspective beginning with simple forms (...) of life and culminating in the ways signals, perception, and language support human experiences of significance. Emergence, embodiment, and “from-via-to” interpretation are key ingredients in this Polanyian version of biosemiotics. (shrink)

This essay examines Michael Polanyi’s notion of tacit knowing and seeks to clarify and elaborate upon its claims. Tacit knowing, which is conscious although inarticulate, must be distinguished from tacit processes, which are largely unconscious. Schematization is explored as a primary tacit process that humans share with all animals. This tacit process organizes and secures, in long-term memory, information of interest provided by receptors and those learned skifls conducive to survival. Human empirical knowing integrates schematized subsidiaries info articulate explicitness through (...) culturally-embedded symbols evoked in terms of felt fittingness. (shrink)

This article offers an appreciative review of Milton Scarborough’s book, Comparative Theories of Nonduality: The Search for a Middle Way. The nondualistic metaphysics and epistemology Scarborough argues for integrating three major influences: the Buddhist notions of emptiness and nothingness, ancient Hebrewcovenantal theology, and the minority perspectives within Western philosophy of Polanyi and Merleau-Ponty. What results is a vision of a protean reality that is not captured adequately by fixed essences—especially dualistic alternatives— or by a drive toward some unreachable certainty in (...) knowledge. The article raises somequestions about the implications of Scarborough’s thought and how he formulates it, but as a whole praises the work as a fine example of cross-cultural philosophy. (shrink)

While acknowledging her appreciation of and dependence upon the philosophy of Michael Polanyi, Marjorie Grene in developing her own philosophical vision distanced herself from some aspects of Polanyi’s thought. This essay examines her critique of a) Polanyi’s incorporation of religious themes in his writing, b) the teleology present in Polanyi’s understanding of evolution, c) his alleged return to dualistic thought, and d) his confusing use of “subjectivity” in Personal Knowledge. The essay points out ways in which her remarks are sometimes (...) trenchant and sometimes miss the mark. (shrink)

In a recent article “From Epistemology to Ontology,” Tihamer Margitay argues that Polanyi fails to establish the necessary correlation he claims between the two levels involved in tacit knowing and corresponding ontological levels. I argue that Margitay correctly shows that such a correspondence does not hold in all cases, but I also point out problems in Margitay’s interpretation of Polanyi and suggest additional bases for ontological claims that go beyond Margitay’s analysis.

The other articles in this issue plus other recent articles on Polanyi’s ethics have helped clarify Polanyi’s distinctive contribution to ethical theory. This article seeks to integrate these insights with Polanyi’s somewhat diffuse treatment of ethics by suggesting what features would be included in a distinctively Polanyian moral point of view. Grounded in psychological satisfactions, social dynamics, and values and ideals regarded as real, Polanyian ethics incorporates features of deontological, utilitarian, and virtue ethics and would support a practice of moral (...) discovery. (shrink)

Inappropriately reductive or deterministic appropriations of science haunt Philip Clayton’s otherwise instructive appropriation of Michael Polanyi’s thought for theological and ethical reflection. The work at hand utilizes contemporary complexity theory to augment Polanyi’s notions of emergence and hierarchy and to provide a vision within which moral responsibility and theological inquiry make sense. It sets forth types and orders of emergence that bypass untenable notions of causality, reducibility, and determinism.

This brief essay introduces five articles that (1) explore the relationship between the philosophy of Michael Polanyi and several other philosophers and that (2) suggest ways that Polanyi’s post-critical thought might be enriched by their philosophical insights.

In Search of Memory, Eric Kandel’s excellent account of the rise of neuroscience, in which his own research has a prominent place, is reviewed with special attention given to its relation to Michael Polanyi’s philosophy. It is found that Polanyi’s epistemological theory, although established on quite different grounds, accords well with Kandel’ s description of how the brain operates. In particular, Polanyi’s theory of tacit knowing seems to be both enriched and validated by Kandel’s account of how memory functions.

Ultimately Michael Polanyi moved from theorizing about reality in terms of three overlapping frameworks of analysis (personal knowing, evolution/ecology, and tacit knowing) to a yet more comprehensive framework of interpretation: meaning construction. An analysis of the dimensions of embodied, symbol drenched meaning construction suggests that the modernist tendency to tether reality to epistemological analysis be replaced by an exploration of three interpenetrating ontological regions: experiences of existential meaning, cultural forms of meaning, and external reality. In support of this view, I (...) make reference to earlier expressions of my work, utilize illustrations from philosophical history, and address comments from my critics. (shrink)

In what manner can philosophy best face world problems? I argue that philosophy's most important contribution to problem solving is not analysis and clarification but synoptic in nature. Relying upon the power of reflection and the scope of imagination as linked to a patient attempt to understand many disciplines, the philosopher ideally seeks to comprehend problems in their many-dimensioned complexity. The disciplines of ecology, evolution, and ethics are especially fruitful in guiding the philosopher seeking to assess the relative worth of (...) things in their emergent inter-relationships. - In the body of the paper I attempt an outline of the outstanding human caused harms, injustices, and instabilities resulting in pain and suffering today. World philosophy today seems sufficiently pluralistic, comprehensive and free of unduly constraining orthodoxies that it can again play a significant role not only in conceptualizing problems but in articulating solutions. Broad visions comparable to Plato's as set forth in the Republic can again be ventured. We need to seek out ways to place into power a council of international philosopher kings and queens offering effective solutions beyond the dictates of partisanship and ideology. I conclude by suggesting five principles that international philosopher kings and queens might be expected to rely upon to bring about a more just global society. (shrink)

This essay celebrates the life and achievements of Richard Gelwick, the man perhaps most responsible for not only recognizing the importance of the thought of Michael Polanyi, but also for communicating its significance and giving it institutional continuity.

Joseph Bracken proposes to modify Whitehead’s tendency to see the comprehensive entities of everyday life as but aggregations of actual occasions. While there are resources in Polanyi’s notion of an emergent cosmos to counter Whitehead’s atomism and reductionism, Bracken’s use of Polanyi’s theory of a morphogenetic field as a corrective is argued to be only partially successful. Bracken must explain how morphogenetic fields evolve and arise. This step would require replacing Whiteheadian reductionism with a principle of ontological parity that honors (...) the reality of interaction between entities and the integration of their operational principles within basic ontological levels and setting forth principles of emergence to explain how these levels and fields arise. (shrink)

This essay critically discusses books not previously reviewed in Tradition and Discovery yet making significant use of Michael Polanyi’s thought. These works suggest Polanyi’s thought continues to play an importanf, if limited, role in contemporary scholarship.

Religious naturalism takes very seriously the meanings inherent in both a scientific understanding of the world and a religious orientation to life well lived. It rejects—as implausible and incompatible with science— the supernaturalism that has dominated Western religious traditions. But can one or more of the varieties of religious naturalism satisfy the fundamental religious needs or yearnings for meaning that have typically been responded to within supernaturalistic worldviews? A challenge facing all types of religious naturalism, if any are to take (...) hold, is to engage these religiously colored needs and yearnings with coherence and integrity.Religious belief and practice typically seem to have more to do with .. (shrink)

Michael Polanyi’s essay “Rules of Rightness” argues that for living beings, both machine-like embodied processes and informal purposeful operations are guided by standards of proper func­tioning. This article traces the origins of rules of rightness back to the concomitant rise of life and purpose in the universe. Thereby the deterministic control of all things by the laws of physics and chemistry is broken. Powered by an independent active principle and guided by three inarticu­late modes of learning, life takes on increasingly (...) complex expressions of purpose in evolutionary history. Along the way, purposeful informal operations make use of and often create contrivances that further the explosive telic growth of life. (shrink)

Recent books by Harry Collins, Neil Gascoigne and Tim Thornton, and Stephen Turner examine the nature of tacit knowledge and the role it plays in society. Their interpretations are outlined and placed in juxtaposition with the extremely broad understanding of tacit factors in knowing set forth by the originator of the term, Michael Polanyi. I argue that the naturalized version advocated by Turner can best develop the richness of Polanyi’s insights, and I sketch out what some of the aspects of (...) a full account of the tacit might look like. (shrink)

What is the nature and scope of aesthetic sensibility and thought? Answers to this question have varied greatly over the centuries. In recent decades, however, there have been few attempts to describe the nature and scope of aesthetics within the ambiance of a far-reaching context that takes account of contemporary developments in relevant disciplines. My intention in this essay is to sketch out the contours of such a comprehensive theory.Toward that end I will first offer a brief impressionistic account of (...) the varied ways aesthetic qualities of experience have been treated during the unfolding of Western thought. In Plato's Symposium, the loving attention devoted to facets of beauty interprets them as but varied... (shrink)

The Promise of Religious Naturalism has binocular vision: (1) it offers readers a searching comparative study of several of the leading contemporary exponents of religious naturalism, and (2) it tests the very notion of religious naturalism for its ability to support religious inclinations and moral imperatives in a time of social and ecological disarray. The four religious naturalists Hogue especially focuses upon are Loyal Rue, Jerome Stone, Ursula Goodenough, and Donald Crosby. Hogue ably shows how each of these thinkers employs (...) a religious variation on the common theme of naturalism. He describes his approach as being “appreciatively critical,” but his appreciation seems more evident than his criticism. His .. (shrink)

Paul Lewis and Walter Gulick summarize and evaluate Mark Micthell’s new book, Michael Polanyi: The Art of Knowing, and Mitchell responds to their comments in this symposium article.

Stephen Turner explores the social dimensions of practices, probing to see if the notion of a shared practice can be understood as a cause or mechanism whereby knowledge arises and is used. When he concludes that practices are not some mysterious collective object but are best explained as individual habits, he thereby rejects an attenuated notion of practice and replaces it with a needlessly atomistic notion in which habits carry the full burden of explanation. Turner makes use of aspects of (...) Polanyi’s thought, but this article suggests ways in which a fuller appropriation of Polanyian insights can salvage a social, telic notion of practices that illuminates human behavior. (shrink)

Rarely have I encountered a book like All Things Shining. It bravely engages issues that are truly significant for our time, yet flaws run through it like faults in the California landscape. The book has spawned contentious critique unusual for a work by contemporary philosophers. Before I offer my own critical analysis, it is fitting first to appreciate what Dreyfus and Kelly attempt to achieve.The foremost contemporary problems the authors combat are what they term "the burden of choice" and a (...) pervasive mood of nihilistic confusion. They believe the rationalistic and existential programs that are typically advocated in our secular age fail to offer persons convincing grounds for making sustainable decisions. .. (shrink)

Although the title Realism in Religion suggests that this collection of essays might be narrowly focused, this work is an ideal entry to Robert Neville's wide-ranging thought as a whole. All but two of the essays were written as lectures, and consequently, Neville states, "the necessity of writing so as to be understood on first reading makes this book more accessible than my more numbingly nuanced monographs" (xiii). Most of the essays date from the past decade, although two were published (...) in 1967. The lectures have quite successfully been rewritten so as to cut down on repetition of content and increase continuity of argumentation. All but two of the fourteen essays are organized to have exactly four .. (shrink)