Background Knowledge: Does it Exist?

Philosophy, traditionally focused on rational thinking, encounters a paradox when analyzing background knowledge - unarticulated, implicit cognitive experience that governs explicit knowledge. The article explores how philosophy, as a second-order reflection, approaches a phenomenon that by definition remains beyond conscious awareness. It briefly examines classical concepts of knowledge (positivism, analytic philosophy) and their crisis in the 20th century, which led to an inclusive redefinition of the notion of knowledge. The focus is on Michael Polanyi’s theory of tacit knowledge, divided into practical (“know-how”) and conceptual dimensions. The study demonstrates that background knowledge serves as a key explanatory resource in the social sciences and humanities, replacing natural science’s causal models with genetic retrospections. However, its ontological status remains problematic: being non-reflective, it retains the features of a “round square” - existing as a cause of explicit knowledge while denying its own cognizability. The author reveals contradictions between the non-alternative nature of background knowledge and the necessity of its critical evaluation. Through the lens of the metaphysics of grounding, background knowledge is interpreted as a historically conditioned foundation of cognitive experience, whose compelling force is revealed only retrospectively. The article proposes an approach linking epistemology with historical ontology, where background knowledge exists as “past-in-the-present,” mediated by collective reflection. This approach responds to philosophy’s aspiration to overcome the gap between rational critique and the unarticulated foundations of knowledge.