Original Research

Toward the recovery of common sense in a post-critical intellectual ethos

Dale Cannon
HTS Teologiese Studies / Theological Studies | Vol 49, No 3 | a2503 | DOI: https://doi.org/10.4102/hts.v49i3.2503 | © 1993 Dale Cannon | This work is licensed under CC Attribution 4.0
Submitted: 13 January 1993 | Published: 13 January 1993

About the author(s)

Dale Cannon, Western Oregon State College, USA, United States

Full Text:

PDF (326KB)

Abstract

This article attempts to articulate what philosopherscientist Michael Polanyi meant by a post-critical intellectual ethos and to explore its implications for concrete academic practice. The modern critical tradition’s strategy for defeating the demon of self-doubt and for securing certainty, as Hannah Arendt has written, restricts serious candidates for belief to those whose conditions of truth can be rendered wholly immanent to focal consciousness within a point of view that is simply taken for granted. Thereby it forecloses the possibility of recognizing the partiality of its own perspective vis-á-vis that of others, taking into account the relevant perspectives of other persons, and reaching any kind of sense in common between perspectives. The institutionalization of this strategy in 20th century academic life is amply and insightfully documented in Bruce Wilshire’s Moral Collapse of the University. Michael Polanyi, in his writings, adumbrates a post-critical intellectual ethos in which the making of sense in common between persons of differing perspective is central to the enterprise of teaching, learning, and research.

Keywords

No related keywords in the metadata.

Metrics

Total abstract views: 2514
Total article views: 1413


Crossref Citations

No related citations found.