Tradition and Discovery: The Polanyi Society Periodical

William Poteat’s work is suggestive of an account of personal identity. The reflexive use of “I” in “I shot the sheriff ” places the act of shooting the sheriff in the context of a story—the story of the agent who reflexively refers to himself as “I” —that contextualizes its significance. Thus, I argue, Poteat shifts the logic of inferences about persons and their acts from the standard Aristotelian category logic to a character logic that represents them as mutually implied and their moments as mutually inclusive.

W.H. Poteat’s critique is that the Western white way of knowing, “gone mad on Descartes,” led to the corruption of Western culture. The author was inspired by his personal relationship with Poteat and the resonance of Poteat’s teaching—“The whole thing must be rethought”—with Howard Thurman’s corresponding account of a culture profaned by slavery in need of transformed relationships— “We are made for each other.” Consequently, the author entered a 40-year career as a white minister and Preacher at the (Black) St. Mark Union congregation in Kansas City, Mo.

In this essay I explore two basic questions that arise from the fact that William H. Poteat subtitled his last book, Recovering the Ground, “Exercises in Critical Recollection.” The first question is: why does he call these dated remarks recollections? The second question is: why does he call them “critical” instead of “post-critical?” I speculate on answers to both of these questions in ways that I think throw light on Polanyi’s post-critical project. In answer to the first question, I suggest that Poteat is providing the “from” element in Polanyi’s “from-to” distinction a much needed historical emphasis since what we attend “from” is always much more than the parts in an epistemic whole. In my answer to the second question, I offer a view of criticism that is post-critical insofar as it calls us to turn around (to be converted) from critical philosophy’s neglect of history and its correlative loss of the world of the things. Poteat is trying to tell us that attention to memory and recollection is a way of subverting discarnate reflection, the best way to return us to the world.