The Architecture of Public Trust

To disclose and highlight Michael Polanyi’s concerns about the sheltering institutions of freedom, the author examines Polanyi’s distinctive (and counterintuitive) conceptions of authority, tradition, and conscience, with particular attention to the argument in Science, Faith and Society. This close reading of his complicated analysis provides the framework for exploring the nature of public trust and its indispensable (and underrated) role in sustaining free societies. The author proposes a distinction between private trust and public trust comparable to Polanyi’s own distinction between private and public liberty.