The British Personalist Forum            

And its Journal Appraisal

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For Personalist Philosophy

What other significance can our existence have than to be ourselves fully and completely?​       John Macmurray

​News, Announcements, Conferences, Workshops

If you would like to add anything to our News page, please email us at: ​[email protected]

Call for Reviews of a New Book: Science, Faith, Society: New Essays on the Philosophy of Michael Polanyi

Appraisal: The Journal of the British Personalist Forum is seeking reviews between 1500 and 3000 words on selections (chapters) of a new compilation of essays on Polanyi: Science, Faith, Society: New Essays on the Philosophy of Michael Polanyi edited by Péter Hartl and published by Springer Cham (2024) . The reviews are intended to be published online and to be presented online as part of a Zoom conference to be held in April 2025 (a tentative date). I would kindly ask anyone keen on contributing a review to inform me of their preferred chapter(s). Reviews are due to be vetted by February 5, 2025. A list of chapters can be seen below. Please email me at [email protected]

The Latest Issue Of Appraisal, Volume 14, No. 1, Special Issue, Spring 2024, is now available to read

This special issue of Appraisal aims to reflect on decisive questions about personalism based on the book by Juan Manuel Burgos, An Introduction to Personalism, translated into English a few years ago by Richard Allen with some collaboration from James Beauregard and Benjamin Wilkinson. We hope that the reader will find here a robust evaluations of Burgos’ work by personalists and philosophers of different orientation (Jose Seifert, Alfred Marek Wierzbicki, James A. Harold, Weronika Janzczuk, and Diana Prokofyeva) as well as equally substantive responses from Juan Manuel Burgos. Click here to read or here to download the issue.

New Editor for 2024

We are pleased to announce the appointment of our new Editor for Appraisal, Abigail Klassen. 

Dr Abigail Klassen

​A big welcome to Abigail whose knowledgeable and enthusiastic approach promises to enliven further issues of Appraisal. Dr Klassen is an independent scholar interested in everything from philosophy of mathematics and science to queer philosophies. She has previously taught at the University of Winnipeg, the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and York University. We would also like to give our deepest thanks to our retiring Editor Richard Allen, whose hard work and scholarly approach have helped make Appraisal a positive force for Personalism; we wish him the very best. Fortunately, he intends to remain very much involved in the Forum and with Appraisal.

The latest issue of Appraisal, Volume 13, No.1, Spring 2023, is now available to read

This issue begins with three full papers from our very successful Zoom Conference in November 2022. Diana Prokofyeva from St Petersburg argues that Higher Education today is too much regarded as something to be ‘consumed’, Henrieta Serban from Bucharest traces connections between neo-pragmatism and Personalism, and Richard Prust from North Carolina gives us the ‘Introduction’ to his forthcoming book, Personal Meaning: How We Give Relational Significance, Relative Importance, Emotional Force and Moral Value to Our Action. Then, to complete the issue, there are reviews of three books of a personalist tenour: Henerieta Serban’s bilingual Neopragmatism and Postliberalism: A Contemporary Weltanschauung, Giorgio Baruchello’s and Ársæll Már Arnarsson’s Humour and Cruelty Volume 1: A Philosophical Exploration of the Humanities and Social Sciences, and Juan Burgos’ Intoducción al Personalismo.

The issue can be viewed by navigating to Appraisal using the menu at the top of this page or by clicking here.

New book on Humour and Cruelty by ​Giorgio Baruchello and Ársæll Már Arnarsson

Humour and Cruelty, Volume 1 - a philosophical exploration of the humanities and social sciences, by Giorgio Baruchello and Ársæll Már Arnarsson, is part of a multi-volume work Humour and Cruelty in the series De Gruyter Studies in Philosophy of Humour due to be published on 7th November 2022.
See ​www.degruyter.com/document/isbn/9783110759839/html.

About this book

Humour has been praised by philosophers and poets as a balm to soothe the sorrows that outrageous fortune’s slings and arrows cause inevitably, if not incessantly, to each and every one of us. In mundane life, having a sense of humour is seen not only as a positive trait of character, but as a social prerequisite, without which a person’s career and mating prospects are severely diminished, if not annihilated. However, humour is much more than this, and so much else. In particular, humour can accompany cruelty, inform it, sustain it, and exemplify it. Therefore, in this book, we provide a comprehensive, reasoned exploration of the vast literature on the concepts of humour and cruelty, as these have been tackled in Western philosophy, humanities, and social sciences, especially psychology. Also, the apparent cacophony of extant interpretations of these two concepts is explained as the inevitable and even useful result of the polysemy inherent to all common-sense concepts, in line with the understanding of concepts developed by M. Polanyi in the 20th century. Thus, a thorough, nuanced grasp of their complex mutual relationship is established, and many platitudes affecting today's received views, and scholarship, are cast aside.

Author Information

​Giorgio Baruchello, University of Akureyri, Akureyri, Iceland; Ársæll Már Arnarsson, University of Iceland, Reykjavik, Iceland.

New Book: Guide to Personal Knowledge: The Philosophy of Michael Polanyi

Guide to Personal Knowledge: The Philosophy of Michael Polanyi is a new book by ​by Dániel Paksi (Budapest University of Technology and Economics (BUTE), Hungary) and Mihály Héder (Budapest University of Technology and Economics (BUTE), Hungary).
Vernon Press, ISBN 978-1-64889-313-1
See vernonpress.com/book/1385

About this book

​This book will help readers understand the most important book of Michael Polanyi, ‘Personal Knowledge’, and help them grasp the essence of his philosophical thinking. In this volume, Polanyi’s goals are first reconstructed, and then his main philosophical arguments are introduced. The discussion is limited to the most crucial ideas that are indispensable for the arc of his book: tacit knowledge, emergence and the fiduciary program.

The thirteen chapters of this volume explain the essence of the thirteen chapters of ‘Personal Knowledge’. The page numbers in this book work just as well with the 2015 ‘Enlarged Edition‘ of ‘Personal Knowledge‘ as with the original issues.

Whether you just want to get the key quotation and the context right on tacit knowledge, emergence or the fiduciary program, or want to have a deep dive for your scholarly research in philosophy and management, this book is for you.