This essay explores the notion of practical religious knowledge in three steps. I examine a short passage in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (A 132-3 / B 171-2) on judgment, a passage that points out that we (necessarily) know more than we can say or state. I then introduce Michael Polanyi’s account of tacit knowledge to suggest what “religious tacit knowledge” is. Finally, I analyze a text from Master Eckhart’s Counsels on Discernment (Reden der Unterweisung) to show the relevance of this notion of practical (or tacit) knowledge in religious contexts.

Why should inhabitants of a postmodern world commit to a contingent tradition? This essay reviews Alasdair MacIntyre’s proposals for tradition constituted-enquiry and compares his account with Polanyi’s ideas focusing on tacit knowing.

This review essay, concerning three collections of Shils’ essays published in 1997, focuses on Shils’ assertion of the importance of charisma or the sacred in the ties that bind a secular society together and enable it to function as it does, asks why Shils did not accept Polanyi’s views about intellectuals, and refers to aspects of the sacred attributed to universities and to our academic traditions.

Cartesian habits of the imagination, thought to be abandoned when Michael Polanyi’s theory of knowledge is embraced, may persist unrecognised and distort interpretation of this theory. These habits are challenged by a ‘radical’ reading of Polanyi which consistently finds a paradigm for knowledge in lively research. It is argued that this is rooted in an intention which is at once and irreducibly receptive and critical, and which gives rise to the ’radical line’ of inquiry. In this setting, Cartesian dualism arises when quieter knowledge, falsely represented to itself, becomes instead a paradigm for knowledge.

This brief essay reflects on my encounters with Polany, June and Rhine and tries to link some elements of their thought.

These brief reflections extend the discussion of Louis H. Swartz review essay “Reflections on Shils, Sacred and Civil Ties, and Universities.” I note the influence Shils and Polanyi had upon one another and comment on issues related to Shils’s thought which Swartz raises in connection with material in three recent, posthumously published volumes of Shils’s writings.