The political passages in Polanyi’s Personal Knowledge are an integral part of his arguments against ‘objectivism’ and/or a post-critical, personalist, fiduciary and fallibilist philosophy. This paper elaboratesthe social and political implications of Polanyi’s emphasis upon acceptance of one’s situation and the exercise in it of a sense of responsibility to transcendent ideals, as against attempts to start with a clean slate, to overcome all imperfections and to find some simple rule for political policy. Prescriptive duties and rights, and mutual trust and solidarity, are the bases of politics, anti responsible action must start with them. But much of modern politics expresses a Gnostic impatience of our created and finite existence which results in arbitrary commitment to some radical and destructive ideology.

This address to The Polanyi Society’s June 13-15, 2008 conference at Loyola University in Chicago commemorates the fiftieth anniversary of Michael Polanyi’s publication of Personal Knowledge and considers the generative influence of Polanyi’s post-critical theory of knowledge that led to The Polany; Society, its journal Tradition & Discovery and more than 2000 books and papers on Polanyi’s philosophy.

This article discusses the 2005 OUP biography of Michael Polanyi by William T. Scott and Martin X. Moleski S.J., Michael Polanyi, Scientist and Philosopher . The discussants are N. E. Wetherick, Brian G Gowenlock, and John Puddefoot; Martin X. Moleski, S. J. briefly responds, providing a previously unpulished letter from Polanyi to Reverend Dr. Knox, a Presbyterian mininster.

This brief reflection remembers the life of T. F. Torrance, theologian and churchman, and some of the ways in which he was influenced by Michael Polanyi.

These brief reflections remember the late Doug Adams, Professor of Christianity and the Arts at Pacific School of Religion and Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley.