We moderns face a dilemma. On the one hand stands the grandeur of enlightenment rationalism, claiming that humans are capable of achieving certain knowledge of universal truths by virtue of the rational minds with which we are endowed. On the other hand stand the so-called postmodernists, who deny any form of epistemological foundationalism and hold that truth is nothing but the construction of a particular society; thus, all truth claims are necessarily local in nature, and aspirations to universal, objective truth represent mistakes at best and intellectual imperialism at worst. In this essay, I want to explore the nature of this dilemma and suggest a third alternative, an alternative that does not succumb to the aspiration of a God’s eye-view, as does the enlightenment rationalist, or retreat into the misshapen hovel of relativism with its attendant subjectivism, as do the post-modernists. In essence, the alternative I will suggest overcomes the problem of modernity by pushing beyond it while at the same time reaching back to recover a pre-modern insight that was jettisoned by those committed to the modern project. Two thinkers who represent the temporal nodes of this third way are the much neglected twentieth-century thinker Michael Polanyi and the great fourth-century father St. Augustine.

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Modern theories of knowledge are characterized by their underlying skepticism. Descartes, the father of modern philosophy, set the stage with his sweeping rejection of tradition and his methodological doubt to which he subjected all possible objects of knowledge. The corrosive work of Cartesian doubt eliminates from the realm of knowledge all that cannot be known “clearly and distinctly.” While Descartes’s conclusions are not widely accepted in the academy today—he managed, for instance, to maintain his Christian belief—his methodology transformed modern philosophy. The rise of scientism resulted, with its confident claim to universality and certainty—the new scientific methodology alone yields true knowledge.

But the optimistic promises of enlightenment rationalism, while producing stunning gains in science and technology, seemed, ironically, to open the door to an inverse movement in the humane fields of inquiry. With technological advances, of course, came greater killing potential—a more efficient means of disposing of one’s enemies. Because it falls outside the purview of modern scientific methodology, morality—along with religion and aesthetics—was reduced to the status of opinion. Once that occurred, it was quite easy to justify acts of brutality, for when the notion of objective good is removed, the means necessary to achieve one’s desired ends are quite insignificant. Thus, modernity, with its universal aspirations conjoined with its radical skepticism, presided over some of the most inhumane acts ever witnessed and did so with the gusto born of rigorous consistency. That is not to say that those individuals who carried out the acts escaped with consciences untouched, but the philosophical assumptions which served as justificatory premises for those acts were not compromised in the process.

Something had to be done. But still the corrosive effects of skepticism continued to extend its influence, for rather than reconstituting philosophy to make room for the humane subjects alongside (or even superior to!) science, the opposite occurred. Science was demoted so that it, too, was seen as producing conclusions completely disconnected from any independently existing reality. All knowledge was reduced to the realm of subjective opinion. The dream of universal certainty gave way to a world filled with disjointed particulars. The radical differences between societies seemed to verify the thesis that all truth is socially constructed and local in scope. Morality, in such a scheme, was necessarily a matter of group preference, and truth became the casualty of a particularism whereby skepticism forbade any attempts toward reasserting the universalism that had failed so miserably.

The apparent dilemma that emerges from this brief account is one that currently besets those of us who participate in this narrative we call the western tradition. In short, the dilemma comes to this: We must embrace either enlightenment rationalism, along with its ideals of universalism and certainty born of initial doubt, or postmodernism, with its particularism and relativism. Since it seems evident that the ideals of the enlightenment rationalist are impossibly lofty, we are, it appears, left with the rather dismal post-modern alternative. But before accepting such a lackluster solution, perhaps we should reconsider. Since enlightenment rationalism was grounded in a deep and all-encompassing skepticism, and since that skepticism, when it had worked its way to the core of western thought, ultimately brought about the demise of enlightenment rationalism itself, it follows that rather than two alternatives to the same problem, enlightenment rationalism and postmodernism nihilism represent two stages of a continuous development. Given the premises upon which enlightenment rationalism was grounded, post-modern nihilism was the inevitable result. In order to escape this downward spiral brought about by an approach to knowledge that gave primacy to doubt, we must somehow free ourselves from the strictures of Cartesian methodology that has served as the overriding motif of the present narrative. In short, where modern theories of knowledge begin with methodological doubt, which, as we have seen, leads to the nihilistic conclusions of post-modernism, what if real knowledge can only be acquired if one begins instead with belief? What if it is the case that, as Polanyi puts it, “to destroy all belief would be to deny all truth”?¹It is this apparently radical proposition that is the basis for what Polanyi termed his “post-critical” philosophy, and he looks to St. Augustine for guidance.

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Going hand-in-hand with its skepticism is the modern rejection of tradition, for submitting to a tradition requires submitting to an authority that has not been vetted by radical doubt. The early moderns initiated their inquiries by explicitly and categorically rejecting the authority of the Aristotelian and religious traditions. Because those traditions were seen as a hindrance to the pursuit of truth, any reliance on tradition—with its attending submission and belief—as a starting point for investigation was rejected. This ideal has continued to our day. Polanyi writes:

To assert any belief uncritically has come to be regarded as an offence against reason. We feel in it the danger of obscurantism and the menace of an arbitrary restriction of free thought. Against these evils of dogmatism we protect ourselves by upholding the principle of doubt which rejects any open affirmation of faith. ²