This paper examines the dominant Western image of Being as presence. It then explores William Poteat's alternative picture of our mindbodily inherence in a world and its relevance for a more adequate understanding of our lived existence.

. Michael Polanyi’s distinction between the indicative meaning of scientific statements and the symbolic and metaphorical meaning of art and religion, presented in Meaning, is based on an abstraction from concrete experience and betrays an inadequate understanding of religious discourse, particularly the discourse of the Judaeo-Christian tradition. In fact, Polanyi’s vision in Personal Knowledge, which analyses the priority of personal action to all achievements of explication, seems either to be denied or forgotton by the positions taken in Meaning. Hence, the (...) argument here is that Meaning is a deviation from Personal Knowledge and a step away from the resources necessary to grasp adequately the logic of religious discourse. (shrink)