Abstract

As a young man, Michael Polanyi gloried in the freedoms he experienced in turn of the century liberal society. He understood liberal society to be the beneficent heritage of Enlightenment thinking. Then the disasters of war, totalitarian rule, and economic breakdown occurred in the twentieth century. Were not these traumatic outcomes also products of Enlightenment thinking? In his 1946 book, Science, Faith and Society, Polanyi struggled to distinguish what was positive from what was negative in the legacy of Enlightenment influence. He discerned that Enlightenment rejection of traditional sources of authority and skepticism about many sorts of normative claims needed to be rethought and replaced. This article examines the intellectual moves Polanyi makes to constitute a post-Enlightenment understanding of social philosophy. Among the features of his resulting philosophy are the importance of traditions as nurturers of norms, the central importance of persons accepting transcendent values embedded within conscience, and the social value of responsible persons relying upon the witness of feelings of existential meaning attuned to the welfare of significant purposes.