Tradition in a free society : the fideism of Michael Polanyi and the rationalism of Karl Popper

Michael Polanyi and Karl Popper offer contrasting accounts of social tradition. Popper is steeped in the heritage of the Enlightenment, while Polanyi interweaves religious and diverse secular strands of thought. Explaining the liberal tradition, Polanyi features tacit knowledge of rules, standards, applications and interpretations being transmitted by “craftsmen” to “apprentices.” Each generation adopts the liberal tradition on “faith,” commits to creatively developing its art of knowledge-in-practice, and is drawn to the spiritual reality of ideal ends. Of particular interest to Popper is the rationality of social traditions. Likened by him to scientific theories, Popper’s traditions are criticizable and improvable, assisting agents to understand, and act in, the world as stable and predictable. Polanyi’s is the more informative rendering of tradition. Polanyi delves deeply into important areas where Popper only scratches their surface: the tacit dimension, transmission by way of apprenticeship, the meaning of tradition for those who participate in it, and the extent of its authority over them.

Diversity, tradition and family : Australian same-sex attracted parents and their families

This paper describes the diversity of family forms within a sample of 455 families parented by same-sex couples and same-sex attracted sole parents from Australia and New Zealand. Around one-third of this sample had conceived at least one of their children while in a previous heterosexual relationship. The remaining two-thirds had conceived at least one child within a same-sex relationship or while they were single. Among this group, the largest proportion was women who conceived using home-based self-insemination with a known donor. A smaller proportion of women had conceived through clinic-based insemination or assisted reproduction with a known or unknown donor. There were 60 male participants in the sample. Around 20% of these men were raising children they had conceived through a surrogacy arrangement; the rest had conceived their children within previous heterosexual relationships or through donor arrangements with single women or lesbians. Around 50% of participants described their family form in terms of a two-parent model, where they and their partner were their children's only parents. Around 34% were sharing care of their children with ex-partners, either a previous heterosexual (opposite sex) partner or a previous same-sex partner. Around 10% described themself as their child's sole parent. In large part, participants in this study were not creating radically new family formations, with around half of all participants describing their family in terms of a two-parent ‘nuclear’ model, albeit a model involving parents of the same gender. However, pathways to conception and/or parenthood did reflect nontraditional patterns.

Tradition as a topic of philosophic interest in Britain in the 1940s

Between 1945 and 1948, Michael Polanyi, Michael Oakeshott, and Karl Popper respectively discussed the nature of tradition, and the part that traditions play in free societies. This article analyzes these thinkers’ ideas of tradition. Polanyi depicted tradition as knowledge that is embodied in skilled practice, and tradition for Oakeshott consists in activities that are suffused with practical knowledge and technique. Popper emphasized rational criticizability, whereas Polanyi and Oakeshott emphasized the tacit dimension of traditions.

The western humanist tradition

In this essay, I describe the development of at least three traditions of humanism: the Platonic, the Aristotelian, and the Promethean. These traditions have developed and intermingled so as to produce the complex and multifaceted face of humanism today. The first, Platonic tradition involves a turning away from the world in order to find wisdom and spirituality in a metaphysical realm. The Aristotelian tradition stresses the need to be at home in the world and happy in life even as we contemplate their unchangeable realities. It speaks of the perfectibility of human beings in muted tones and shows a reverence for the changeable world, as well as for the fragile, vulnerable, fallible, and mortal condition of being human. However, it is the Promethean tradition, with its celebration of science, progress, and technology, that has had the greatest effect upon modern civilization and spirituality. The culmination of these various streams of thought was the Enlightenment: a movement that its greatest philosopher, Immanuel Kant, interpreted as giving humanity permission, for the first time, to think for itself. But the Enlightenment leads to a disenchanted world in which spirituality seems to have no place. I argue that my subjectivity is a transcendent reality and that our very subjectivity becomes a real self and a social being insofar as it is drawn towards the Other. Accordingly, a humanist spirituality is possible in the form of reverence, love, and humility in the presence of transcendence. While religions give the names of their gods to this transcendence, humanism gives it other names: Subjectivity, the Other, Beauty, Goodness, and Truth.

Rationalism and tradition: The Popper–Oakeshott conversation

In 1948 Karl Popper sent a copy of his paper, ‘Utopia and Violence’, to Michael Oakeshott. Popper had recently read Oakeshott’s essay ‘Rationalism in Politics’, appreciating its relevance to views he had expressed in The Open Society. Oakeshott wrote to Popper at some length, explaining his thoughts about reason, tradition and kindred matters, to which Popper responded. This paper reproduces these letters and discusses them with reference to pertinent writings of Popper and Oakeshott. While showing there was much common ground between the two men and that they significantly influenced each other, the writings reveal important differences over the role of reason and tradition in social and political life.