Neil Gascoigne and Tim Thornton’s Tacit Knowledge is an attempt to find a place for tacit knowledge as “knowledge” within the limits of analytic epistemology. They do so by reference to Jason Stanley and Timothy Williamson’s analysis of the term “way” and by the McDowell-like claim that reference to the tacitly rooted “way” of doing something exhausts the knowledge aspect of tacit knowledge, which preserves the notion of tacit knowledge, while excluding most of Michael Polanyi’s examples, and rendering Hubert Dreyfus’s and John Searle’s accounts irrelevant. This is more a redefinition of terms than an account of tacit knowledge.

In Understanding the Tacit, Stephen Turner contends that 1) neo-Kantian frameworks, understood as identical (tacit) possessions collectively shared, do not exist and 2) in communicating with a person from another perspective, a speaker is not making explicit one’s tacit knowledge, but rather improvising an articulation relative to a given context. Turner establishes the first point in convincing fashion. However, he does not allow for the possibility of similar tacit knowledge that is in some sense “shared.” While Turner has positive things to say about the embodied nature of tacit knowledge, other contentions seem to undermine the crucial nature of embodiment. Turner is also correct on his second point, though he could have strengthened his argument by recognizing Polanyian implications and insights on the difficulty or impossibility of making the tacit explicit.

In this response to David Nikkel’s review essay on Understanding the Tacit, his suggestion that the book fails to incorporate insights from embodiment theorists is addressed. It is noted, against his appeal to the example of Lakoff’s and Johnson’s discussion of the bodily origins of metaphors used in reasoning, that there are problems with treating particular embodied elements as ineliminable. Also noted is the evidence of Luria’s studies of reasoning among the unschooled, which suggest that syllogistic inference is learned, which raises questions about the relation of embodied knowing and these kinds of inferences. It is suggested that another kind of embodiment thinking, involving emulation, is a better way to approach higher reasoning, and by extension also the kind of specialized knowledge usually discussed as tacit knowledge by Polanyi.

This brief essay summarizes Nicholas Wapshott’s Keynes Hayek: The Clash that Defined Modern Economics and relates the early economic thought of Michael Polanyi to the dispute by raising questions for further reflection: Should we classify Polanyian economic thought as Hayekian or Keynesian, or is it something in between? How can it help us better understand the debate between these two? How is the agenda of the economist and social theorist Polanyi revealed through its connection to one of the most important episodes of the history of economic thought in the twentieth century?

Thomas Pfau’s Minding the Modern simultaneously (1) elucidates the correspondence between various philosophical issues, (2) identifies how these issues were disaggregated during the modern period and how this led to the collapse of humanistic studies, and (3) outlines a strategy for reintegrating these issues and thereby restoring confidence in forms of philosophical, historical, and moral reasoning. Pfau engages many of the problems Michael Polanyi sought to address, but approaches them from a rather different perspective.

Huius recensione subiectum liber est, qui ab Ulrico G. Leinsle sub titulo Einführung in die scholastische Theologie Germanice conscriptus, a M. J. Miller magna cum sollertia Anglice redditus est. In hoc libro Leinsle materiae historicae copiam diligentissime collegit ac ordine disposuit, contributionem faciens singularem et novam ad philosophiae historiam cognoscendam. Scholaribus et viris scientificis, qui hisce legatis intellectualiis studeant, liber dictus conspectum offerit latum et valde comprehensivum principaliorum problematum ac methodorum theologiae scholasticae, rebus tamen minutis non neglectis. Leinsle demonstravit, locupletem ac multiformem traditionem scholasticam partem principalem habuisse in civilizatione occidentali constituenda.The subject of this review is the book Introduction to Scholastic Theology by Ulrich G. Leinsle which was originally published in Germany as Einführung in die scholastische Theologie (the English translation of the book was very well rendered by M. J. Miller). Leinsle gathered rich historical material which he organized into an original, impressive contribution to our knowledge of the history of philosophy. It offers students and scholars interested in this intellectual legacy a comprehensive, panoramic overview of the main problems and methods of Scholastic theology and provides a quick glimpse of many sub-topicsas well. Leinsle has shown that the rich and varied Scholastic tradition played a key role in constituting our Western civilization.

Critical theorist Elizabeth Grosz moves beyond the New Materialism she previously espoused and argues for a monism that avoids reductive materialism, holding that materiality is inconceivable without its immaterial frame. She also argues that this position ought to serve as the basis for an immanent and non-normative ontoethics. I give a summation and review of the book before offering an argument against such an approach to ethics. I also offer a related critique of the tendency, widespread within critical theory, to consider all transcendence oppressive.

In his latest book, The Resurrection of Jesus, Dale Allison states that, while he personally believes that Jesus resurrected, “the purely historical evidence is not, on my view, so good as to make disbelief unreasonable, and it is not so bad as to make faith untenable.” This review focuses on Allison’s discussion concerning apparitions, hallucination theory, mass hysteria, and pareidolia. While appreciative of various aspects of Allison’s work, this article points out various problems with Allison’s use of materials in other disciplines, a number of fallacies of reasoning in Allison’s analyses, and demonstrates that the best skeptical hypothesis against Jesus’s resurrection suggested by Allison is untenable.