Tradition and Discovery: The Polanyi Society Periodical

Volume 30, Issue 1, 2003/2004

Polanyi on Language and the Human Way of Being Bodily Mindful in the World

Using the ideas of Clifford Geertz, Adolf Portmann, Charles Taylor, and others, I seek to develop and expand Polanyi’s account of language and its role in our human way of being bodily mindful in the world. The expansion of Polanyi’s ideas on language in the evolutionary rise of Homo sapiens and in the moral and mental development of the child does two things that I believe are important: (1) obviates the need to appeal to an incorporeal thinking substance - i.e., dualism - to ground the reality of human transcendence, and (2) highlights the place of natural language in the irreducibility of human mentality.