Abstract
Among the most prominent reviewers of Polanyi's Personal Knowledge, certainly in England, is Michael Oakeshott. The critical features of his review are well known. Less often noted is Oakeshott's overall approval of the book as well as his considerable enthusiasm for it. What accounts for this positive appraisal? The thesis of this study is that Oakeshott is attracted to Polanyi's magnum opus due to an affinity for its portrayal of the human condition of which he is not fully and explicitly aware. Although Oakeshott is a skeptical idealist and Polanyi a hopeful realist, their positions converge in regard to justification. In fundamental respects, Polanyi and Oakeshott are in concert. Oakeshott is sometimes alleged to be a moral relativist. Polanyi scholars understand that he at times has been similarly accused. In Personal Knowledge, Polanyi responds effectively to this accusation. Because Oakeshott on relevant matters agrees with Polanyi, he is immune to the charge of relativism as well. While Oakeshott offers his own defense against this indictment, he is drawn to Polanyi because he tacitly grasps that, in Polanyi's personalist expansion and enrichment of the concept of experience, there is a deeper and thereby more effectual response to the charge. In sum, if Oakeshott is a moral relativist, so too is Polanyi. But Polanyi is not, and, for the very reason we say this, neither is Oakeshott. The inclination to assert the opposite, in addition to maligning Oakeshott, comes at the cost of overlooking Polanyi's primary contribution to intellectual history.