Polanyi on Specific and General Authority. Dr.Simon Smith.
From 28.07.2011 to 31.07.2011 the Michael Polanyi - Conference took place at the Theodor Heuss Academie in Gummersbach. Michael Polanyi was a (pre-) thinker of liberalism in the 20th Century. The best-known doctors and professors presented their work on the conference presentations.
The Dr. Simon Smith, University of Southampton / Kingston College, published his work. "
Dr. Simon Smith.(IINews) - From 28.07.2011 to 31.07.2011 the Michael Polanyi - Conference took place at the Theodor Heuss Academie in Gummersbach. Michael Polanyi was a (pre-) thinker of liberalism in the 20th Century. The best-known doctors and professors presented their work on the conference presentations.
The Dr. Simon Smith, University of Southampton / Kingston College, published his work. " Polanyi on Specific and General Authority in Science and Society. " " Philosophers are often pessimistic when it comes to the idea of authority. They tend to see it as a problem. It represents the desire to constrain and coerce human behaviour. This, we are told, stands in stark opposition to freedom: essence of human nature and crucial element of moral and political thinking. (Without it, responsibility is a difficult idea to get off the ground.) As desirable as individual freedom may be it seems a stable society is vital for the security and prosperity of everyone.
That requires authority. Leave human nature to its own devices, however, and society collapses. We would quickly revert to a state of nature in which the struggle for limited resources is inevitably violent and life in general, nasty, brutish, and short. At least, that’s what the philosopher Thomas Hobbes thought. Michael Polanyi had a different view. He was not, of course, blind to the traditional ideas of, among others, the architects of social contract theory (Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau).
He saw those ideas put into practice across two thousand years of European history. Nevertheless, Polanyi did have a far more optimistic view of the nature and purpose of society, and of the authority organising it. Avoiding the traditional conflict between authority and freedom, Polanyi identified instead the different types of authority exercised in European societies, describing them as the Specific and the General. Polanyi’s discussion of these contrasting modes appeared in a series of lectures and essays, published as Science, Faith and Society (SFS) and The Logic of Liberty (LL), and in the central chapters of his book, Personal Knowledge (PK).
To a great extent, he honours the progressive, liberal tradition which we, in the West, know very well. Underlying this, however, is a rich and subtle understanding of human nature that will be unfamiliar territory for many. There, the intrinsic and necessary connections between individuality and sociality can clearly be seen. These connections, as we shall see, are matters of faith. Crucially, therefore, Polanyi’s contribution to modern political thinking lies in his insight into the role of faith-commitments in human development.
It lies, that is, in his insight into the role of faith-commitments in configuring authority and the ways in which that authority then governs our intellectual, cultural, and moral communities. To begin with specific authority: this, Polanyi suggests, is the central organising principle of both medieval societies – which he calls ‘static’ – and the revolutionary societies that replaced them during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Both the static and the revolutionary are subject to highly structured organisation, governed by a centralised authority effecting every level of society.
This authority is expressed in an orthodox ideology, to which every member of society is compelled to subscribe. Strict limits are imposed on all intellectual, moral, and cultural activities, limits which define the terms in which those activities may be legitimately (i.e. legally) conducted. The central authority thereby determines the methods and even the conclusions of any enquiry. What we have, then, is a specific set of ideas and practices, with a specific set of standards and values dictated by a specific group of people and imposed on the rest of society.
There are, of course, important differences in the ways this specific authority was exercised in static and revolutionary societies. The medieval world, for instance, was organised according to an orthodox dogma that was at once moral, metaphysical, and political. In essence, it determined the individual’s place in the natural hierarchies, which feudal society reflected. It is important to remember, however, that intellectual and cultural pursuits did flourish despite this. This, Polanyi tells us, is because “[n]o static society ever denied the intrinsic power and worth of thought” (PK, 213). The respect accorded to the authority of orthodox teaching implies as much.
As a result, “[r]eligion, morality, law and all the arts were respected in their own right” (PK, 213). There was, in other words, a profound reverence for truth and the search for truth – as long as they agreed with the official version. After all, truth that is divinely ordained must be protected. A philosopher’s-eye view of political and intellectual history suggests that, beneath the reverence, a deeper psychological conflict was at work. This conflict would ultimately destabilise the intellectual, moral, and cultural foundations of feudal society. It became clear that, while the truth may be divinely ordained, the minds appointed to interpret and disseminate it were anything but.
The human mind, however learned, is limited, fallible, subjective. This stands in sharp contrast to infallible and objective Truth. As undeniable as it is intractable, this contrast became the driving force behind the moral, political, and philosophical defeat of orthodox thought embodied by the modern period. In the early twentieth century, revolutionary politics engulfed Europe. The rise of Fascism and Marxism saw truth and morality redefined as mere power-relations, tools of oppression wielded by a socio-political elite. It was a self-fulfilling prophecy. Like the old order they replaced, revolutionary societies had their own dogma.
Instead of revering truth, however, they demanded unquestioning obedience to a materialist ideology: a new orthodoxy that reduced human beings and their activities to political and economic functions. Intellectual and moral independence was denied; “the self-destruction of freedom” had begun (PK, 214). The moral and intellectual passions that should have freed society from feudal tyranny “transformed into the hidden driving force of a political machine”. Despite fundamental differences in outlook and outcome, both east and west saw that machine “proclaimed as inherently right and granted absolute dominion over thought” (PK, 214). Totalitarianism reigned.
Taken to its logical and political conclusions, then, specific authority results in the demise of intellectual, moral, and political freedom. That much, history shows, is undeniable. In an effort to restore those fundamental values, Polanyi turned to another branch of knowledge, one with which he was intimately acquainted. He turned to his own experience of scientific enquiry. There he found a self-organising community of thinkers whose activities were governed by the mutual exercise of general authority. The difference between general and specific authority is a matter of who defines and exercises it.
In specific authority, that is, we found a specific way of doing things dictated by a specific authority. General authority, on the other hand, offers a general approach to whatever activity needs organising, generally agreed upon by everyone involved. This means that, rather than being centralised, general authority is ‘atomised’, diffused throughout the community. As such, it is embodied by the collective and individual activities of everyone claiming membership of that community. General authority is, therefore, defined and exercised by all the members of a community on behalf of the community and all its members.
Being a matter of mutual agreement, defining and exercising authority is also, inevitably, a matter of conscience. The operations of conscience, Polanyi assures us, are underpinned by a basic commitment to certain assumptions and beliefs. These ground and shape the ideals and values which in turn ground and shape the community. Training the conscience to understand and exercise those commitments is the primary function of education. It begins when we accept certain individuals, books, and bodies of work as intellectual authorities. For the nascent scientist, this means the whole history and tradition of scientific discovery. We should remember, Polanyi advises, that there is nothing inevitable about this process.
Like all education, it is a question of faith. The student must believe that great thinkers like Galileo, Newton, and Einstein really did say something true about the world, that their discoveries really did uncover some aspect of the real world. This is not just a matter of intellectual integrity. Accepting the authority of her predecessors is an expression of the scientist’s faith in the beliefs and assumptions which drove them. It is an expression of faith in the methods and standards that shaped their investigations and, by extension, the entire field of scientific enquiry; and it is an expression of faith in the values and ideals of the community of scientists.
By accepting those standards and values as the guiding principle of her own enquiries, the scientist also accepts the responsibility to uphold them on behalf of the scientific community. She accepts the responsibility to act as an intellectual and practical authority for all other scientists. She must, in short, be willing and able to express an opinion on the work of others regarding its quality and significance. This she will do by fulfilling various professional duties: refereeing for scientific journals and participating in the distribution of resources through the funding grants, for example.
Most importantly, perhaps, she must pass on those standards, values, and ideals to the next generation of scientists through teaching and research. All scientists must accept these responsibilities if they wish to claim a place in the community. And there is a clear moral imperative in doing so. To become one authority among others entails an obligation to uphold, disseminate, and embody its principles to the best of one’s ability. The scientist commits herself to exercise the general authority bestowed on her by the community in good conscience. What Polanyi offered, then, was a picture of science, not as a body of knowledge, but as an independent community governed by shared faith-commitments.He did so, I suggest, because the values and ideals of science reflect the values and ideals of a healthy and progressive society. Science truly flourishes, that is, only where its moral and intellectual commitments are seriously endorsed; where it’s obligations to truth and freedom of thought are unconstrained by political orthodoxy of any sort. In short, a self-governing community will only survive in a society where self-government is both respected and expected.The principles of general authority are, Polanyi believed, embodied by the institutions of free democracy. They are fundamental to education and healthcare; and they are essential to legal, penal, and social justice.
Notably, he saw those principles at work in a most important cultural practice: “the art of free discussion” (SFS, 67). Public debate governed by the demands of fairness and tolerance is a vital expression of any society’s obligation to put truth before personal advantage. The purpose of such a society and the authority which configures it is, in the end, nothing more than to support the individual in her pursuit of such ideals.
That, Polanyi insisted, is the basic condition for an “intellectually and morally acceptable life” (SFS, 83). It is this understanding of the nature and purpose of society which, I suggest, distinguishes Polanyi as one of the most important social and political thinkers of the 20th century. In the end, it enabled him to overcome the fundamental opposition between freedom and authority on which all totalitarian ideologies are built. "
Natalia Eitelbach.
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Datum: 03.10.2011 - 17:19 Uhr
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