Michael Polanyi, Alasdair Maclntyre, and the Role of Tradition

HUMANITAS 97the possibiUty of returning to a golden past.Yet neither do they Postmodern-believe that skepticism and despair (or apathy) are satisfying alism a logical ternatives.Both lament the early modern rejection of the role of ^^^l l ^^^^^^' ^ tradition in enquiry.Such concepts as belief, authority, and the project possibility of speaking of the reality of moral and theological truths were, in the wake of Cartesian doubt, undermined and eventually dispensed with altogether.Both Polanyi and Maclntyre argue that what has come to be called postmodernism is a logical continuation of the modern project.Ironically, both believe that the way to move beyond what they perceive as the dead end wrought by modernity is a rediscovery of the central role played by tradition.Thus, a discussion of tradition will provide a vantage point from which to compare the views of these two thinkers and comprehend the complementary way each seeks to remedy the defects of modernism and its postmodern offspring and thereby create a context within which the meaningful discussion of truth can occur.If they are correct, then we do well to attend to their work, for they serve as guides calling us out of the dark woods of modernity and offering the tantalizing possibility of something that is truly postmodern.In the late 1970s Maclntyre mentions Polanyi with some frequency and discusses him on several occasions.^He criticizes him primarily for succumbing to irrationalism, which, according to

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  Paul Scherz•Science and Christian Ethics•2019

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