The Infona portal uses cookies, i.e. strings of text saved by a browser on the user's device. The portal can access those files and use them to remember the user's data, such as their chosen settings (screen view, interface language, etc.), or their login data. By using the Infona portal the user accepts automatic saving and using this information for portal operation purposes. More information on the subject can be found in the Privacy Policy and Terms of Service. By closing this window the user confirms that they have read the information on cookie usage, and they accept the privacy policy and the way cookies are used by the portal. You can change the cookie settings in your browser.
Popper's original vision of the open society is criticized as being, in a certain sense, utopian. Discussion alone will not resolve fundamental political differences, particularly where those differences bear on the premises of liberalism itself. It is noted that Popper later presented a more nuanced view of openness and liberalism, one which sees these concepts as embedded in a tradition of political...
Popper claims that error indicates what to avoid and there is no recipe for how to proceed. Most rationalist philosophers ignore his arguments and still try to justify their views instead of trying to improve upon them by criticizing them and conjecturing alternatives. In public discourse barren forms of justification are widespread. More and better critical institutions are required, and these require...
Popper's concept of the open society articulates and further develops the classical paradigm of the liberal human condition. The radical challenge of totalitarianism as an alternative mode of human existence motivated Karl Popper to define freedom, the very heart of democratic civilization, as the standard and criterion of human dignity. Dictatorships and totalitarian regimes suppress human freedom,...
We are problem solving active guess-workers, capable of an indefinite number of anticipations, which we have to criticize through the analysis of their deductive consequences. “Inductive inferences” are an illusion; either they are pure guesses, or enthymematic deductive reasonings, with an implicit “fair sample hypothesis.” Our aim is not justification or even consensus, but truth. And it is because...
This chapter retraces the way in which the Austrian philosopher Sir Karl Popper came to accept a Correspondence Theory of Truth from the work of the Polish logician and mathematician Alfred Tarski. It is argued that Popper's use of Tarski's semantic theory of truth reveals crucial insights into the fundamental characteristics of Popper's social philosophy. Quite deceptively, arguments based upon Tarski's...
In this paper I start with a critical discussion of the communitarian justification of moral standards with reference to communally shared moral convictions. I criticize a reconstructed communitarian ethical position on two levels: an individual level, focusing on the possibility to criticize and reject the moral standards of one's own community, and a socio-cultural level, emphasizing the intracul-tural...
In this chapter, I argue that Karl Popper was a communitarian philosopher. This will surprise some readers. Liberals often tout Popper as one of their champions. Indeed, there is no doubt that Popper shared much in common with liberals. However, I will argue that Popper rejected a central, though perhaps not essential, pillar of liberal theory, namely, individualism. This claim may seem to contradict...
Among “the great generation”, Popper claims, Socrates has contributed more than any other intellectual to the new faith of the open society and even died for it (Popper 1945, Vol. 1, pp. 128, 189). Bearing on the ‘Socratic problem’, Popper insisted that the historical Socrates, especially in the Crito and the Apology, didn't have any metaphysical theory nor made any effort to theorize (ibid., pp....
Set the date range to filter the displayed results. You can set a starting date, ending date or both. You can enter the dates manually or choose them from the calendar.