The importance of engagement

Charles Taylor

Jon Fennell

Charles W. Lowney

D. M. Yeager

pp. 215-234

in: Charles W. Lowney (ed), Charles Taylor, Michael Polanyi and the critique of modernity, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017

Abstract

This chapter consists of Taylor's response to the chapters of Fennell, Lowney, and Yeager. He presents a historical perspective on Polanyian attempts to revitalize religious or moral meanings. He sees Polanyi's efforts as a second way—Deism being an example of a first—in which the discoveries of science can be made consistent with the idea of a moral universe or a transcendent source of meaning. In response to Yeager, Taylor suggests that, although Polanyi's notion of tacit knowing and personal knowledge emphasize the development of ideas from experience, Polanyi's approach in the political domain was too abstract. This inconsistency in Polanyi's approach to political theory puts him in the company of neo-Kantian political philosophers such as John Rawls, who don't seem to recognize the way that real political solutions require a sort of dialogue that breaches any clean divide between reasonable arguments in the political domain and personal interests or comprehensive doctrines. This response to Polanyi's political theory also seems to weigh in against using a broad cosmic imaginary as a starting point for revitalizing religious feeling and conceptions. While Polanyi may remove a cross-pressure against religious belief by showing how science can be consistent with a broadly religious outlook, a new imaginary may need to grow naturally out of various religious traditions.

Cited authors

Kant Immanuel

Rawls John