William H. Poteat, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death
TweetWilliam H. Poteat
American philosopher
Date of Birth: 19-Apr-1919
Place of Birth: Kaifeng, Henan, China
Date of Death: 17-May-2000
Profession: philosopher
Zodiac Sign: Aries 
About William H. Poteat
- For other people with names similar to this go to William Poteat (disambiguation).William H.
- Poteat (19 April 1919 – 17 May 2000) was an American philosopher, scholar, and charismatic professor of philosophy, religion, and culture at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill from 1947 to 1957 and at Duke University from 1960 to 1987.
- During that time he did foundational work in the critique of Modern and Postmodern intellectual culture.
- He was instrumental in introducing scientist-philosopher Michael Polanyi and his Post-Critical philosophy to the United States.
- He was a master of the Socratic Method of teaching and identified himself a "practicing dialectician," skilled through the use of irony in "understanding and elucidating conflicting points of view" As a Post-Critical philosopher, he encouraged his students and the readers of his books to recover their authentic selves from the confusing, self-alienating abstractions of modern intellectual life.
- This task and purpose Poteat came to recognize as profoundly convergent with Michael Polanyi's critique of Modern Critical thought.
- His teaching and writing also drew upon and combined in new ways the ideas of seminal critics of modern culture such as Pascal, Kierkegaard, Arendt, Wittgenstein (later works), and Merleau-Ponty—whose thinking Poteat came to identify as "Post-Critical" (rather than Postmodern), using a key concept from Michael Polanyi's Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy.
- His papers are archived at the Yale Divinity School Library.
Read more at Wikipedia