On Michael Oakeshott's Review of Michael Polanyi's Personal Knowledge

Abstract

Some people have found the alliance between Michael Polanyi's knowledge theory, tacit knowledge and Michael Oakeshott's one, traditional knowledge. For example, the scholars on Hayekian thought like John Gray and Mikio Watanabe and a scholar on Oakeshott's thought think so. In fact, Oakeshott himself wrote a review of Polanyi's Personal Knowledge; It was titled “The human coefficient.” Personal Knowledge is a book in which Polanyi stated his knowledge theory, “tacit knowledge theory” for the first time. Then, did Oakeshott say the alliance between his traditional knowledge or practical knowledge and Polanyi's tacit knowledge? Or did he say his knowledge theory had affected Polanyi's theory or Polanyi's theory did his theory? But he didn't say so at all. To begin with, he didn't talk about Polanyi's tacit knowledge at all. In the first place, tacit knowledge is not comparable to a certain way of thinking like traditional knowledge. Tacit knowledge should be called a power or function which integrates parts into whole beyond “logical gap.” According to Polanyi, it is indispensable to every knowledge involved science. It is not a sort of a way of thinking involved traditional knowledge but transcended and points to universality. Moreover, in this review Oakeshott pointed out important thing. I think he understood Polanyi much better than he scholars on Hayekian thought and a scholar on Oakeshott's thought. Through consideration of this review and his other papers, we cannot find their philosophical alliance but their great difference in position. As Oakeshott pointed out “Hegelian echoes” to of him, Polanyi sought universal truth. On the other hand, it is nihilism or the limit of reason that we can derive from Oakeshott's philosophy. Thus this small review can be an important paper to understand the relationship between Oakeshott and Polanyi.