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Politics and Morality in the Thought of Karl Popper

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

Kenneth Minogue
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Extract

LIKE MANY PEOPLE, I FIND KARL POPPER BOTH FASCINATING and irritating. His vigour and lucidity are irresistible, and no one could complain that he fails to engage with the big questions. The problems begin when we consider his political thought. Some think him one of the great liberal philosophers of the century. I on the other hand, while being fascinated by The Open Society and its Enemies, am repelled by the grossness of its caricaturing of most of the thinkers it touches. The Poverty of Historicism is a marvellous text in the philosophy of the social sciences, but the idea of historicism is a straw man. The paradox seems to be that while there is a lot that refers to the political questions of the day, there is virtually nothing which takes up issues of political philosophy directly. The result is that he seems to me always to be on the wrong foot, and my problem is to discover why.

Type
Research Article
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 30 , Issue 1 , 01 January 1995 , pp. 74 - 85
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 1995

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References

1 Popper, Karl, Unended Quest, London, Routledge, 1992, p. 35Google Scholar.

2 ibid., p. 34.

3 The Open Society and Its Enemies, London, Routledge, fifth edition, 1967, ch. 3.

4 ibid., Vol. I, ch. 8.

5 ibid., Vol. II, p. 396.

6 Gellner, Ernest, Legitimation of Belief, Cambridge University Press, 1974, p. 168 ffGoogle Scholar.

7 Hayek, F. A., ‘Why I am not a Conservative’ in The Constitution of Liberty, London, Routledge, 1960, p. 397Google Scholar.

8 John Gray argues that ‘Nothing in Popper’s opposition to Utopianism commits him to condemning revolution in all circumstances: he has, in fact, specified circumstances in which he judges it to be desirable’. He then agrees with critics who say that Popper’s guidance about when revolution might be permissible is ‘unenlightening and might be too restrictive’. ‘The Liberalism of Karl Popper’ in Gray, John, Liberalism, London, Routledge, 1989, p. 23Google Scholar.

9 Popper, Karl, The Poverty of Historicism, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1966, section 21, p. 64Google Scholar.

10 Poverty of Historicism, p. 65.

11 ibid., p. 69.

12 ‘Public Opinion and Liberal Principles’ in Conjectures and Refutations, London, Routledge, 1969, p. 348.

13 Open Society, Vol. II, p. 386.

14 For example ‘Law, morality, religion, are to him so many bourgeois prejudices, behind which lurk in ambush just as many bourgeois interests’. ‘Manifesto of the Communist Party’ in Marx, Karl, Friederick Engels: Collected Works: Volume 6, London, Lawrence & Wishart, 1976, pp. 494–5Google Scholar.

15 Poverty of Historicism, p. 88.

16 ‘Towards a rational theory of tradition’ in Conjectures and Refutations, p. 122.

17 ‘Criticism and Tradition in Popper, Oakeshott and Hayek’, Journal of Applied Philosophy, Vol. 9, No. 1, 1992, p. 65.