Tai Lieu Chat Luong THE POLITICAL THOUGHT OF KARL POPPER THE POLITICAL THOUGHT OF KARL POPPER Jeremy Shearmur London and New York First published 1996 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2002. Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 © 1996 Jeremy Shearmur Jeremy Shearmur has asserted his moral right to be identified as the author of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data Shearmur, Jeremy, 1948– The political thought of Karl Popper/Jeremy Shearmur. Includes bibliographical references and index. IS BN 0-415-09726-6 (alk. Popper, Karl Raimund, Sir, 1902—Contributions in political science.092—dc20 96–7016 CI P ISBN 0-203-21282-7 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-21294-0 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0-415-09726-6 (Print Edition) To Colin, Mary and Pam CONTENTS Acknowledgements ix Bibliographical information xi INTRODUCTION 1 1 THE DEVELOPMENT OF POPPER’S POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY 18 Introduction 18 New Zealand 22 The placing of The Open Society 26 After The Open Society 30 2 THE OPEN SOCIETY AND THE POVERTY OF HISTORICISM 37 Popper contextualized 37 Between Scylla and Charybdis 40 The political philosophy of The Open Society 47 3 AFTER THE OPEN SOCIETY 65 Introduction 65 Epistemological optimism 66 ‘Towards a Rational Theory of Tradition’ 70 Politics and ‘world 3’ 78 4 VALUES AND REASON 89 Moral theory 89 Moral universalism and negative utilitarianism 99 The limits of rationalism? 106 vii CONTE NTS 5 POPPER, LIBERALISM AND MODIFIED ESSENTIALISM 109 Introduction: liberalism and democratic socialism in The Open Society 109 Some remarks about monitoring 116 Popper’s anti-essentialism 124 Structure and depth in the social world 125 Political philosophy revisited 131 Abstract institutions and social engineering in an open society 133 6 THE CONTEMPORARY RELEVANCE OF POPPER’S WORK 159 Introduction 159 Between dogmatism and relativism 160 Critical theory 164 Towards a normative sociology of knowledge 168 Popper’s critique of romanticism 172 Conclusion 175 Notes 179 Name index 209 Subject index 213 viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The contents of this volume draw upon reading and discussion with those interested in Popper’s work, over many years—in which connection I would particularly like to thank my teachers at the LSE Philosophy Department, and Karl Popper himself.
It would be futile to try to refer to all those from whom I have gained, through discussion on these issues, but I would particularly like to thank the following: Bill Bartley, Larry Briskman and lan Jarvie (especially for his comments on a late version of the manuscript); Malachi Hacohen and Geoff Stokes for recent work on Popper’s political thought which I have found particularly stimulating; the Austrian Wittgenstein Society, the Departments of Philosophy at the University of Montreal and York University, Toronto, and the Department of Economics, University of Vienna, for the opportunity to present some of this material; and Liberty Fund for invitations to conferences which, in retrospect, have been important in shaping my ideas on issues discussed in this volume. I would also like to thank the Earhart Foundation for financial support which allowed me to undertake research in the Popper Archives at the Hoover Institution, upon which I have drawn in writing this volume, and I am grateful to the staff at the Hoover Institution Archives for their unfailing help, assistance and consideration. In addition, I would like to thank Mr and Mrs Mew for their permission to quote some unpublished material from the Popper Archives at the Hoover Institution, and to mention that portions of the material in the present volume were first published as: ‘Philosophical Method, Modified Essentialism and The Open Society’, in I. Laor (eds) Critical Rationalism, the Social Sciences and the Humanities, Essays for Joseph Agassi, volume ix ACKNOWLE DG E M E NTS II, Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1995; ‘Epistemological Limits of the State’, Political Studies, 1990; ‘II liberalismo a la societa aperta’, in Popper: il metodo e la polit-ica, Biblioteca delta Liberta 84–5, 1982; ‘Abstract Institutions in an Open Society’, in Wittgenstein, The Vienna Circle and Critical Rationalism, HPT, Vienna, 1979.
Finally, some of the ideas which have influenced my approach to Popper are explored further in my Hayek and After, London and New York: Routledge, 1996. Jeremy Shearmur, Bungendore, NSW March 1995 x BIBLIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION The Logic of Scientific Discovery (1934), London: Hutchinson, 1959. The Poverty of Historicism (1944–5), London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1957. The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945), London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, fifth edition, 1966.
Conjectures and Refutations, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1963. Objective Knowledge, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972. Unended Quest, London: Fontana, 1976. The Self and Its Brain (with Sir John Eccles), Berlin, etc.
Postscript to The Logic of Scientific Discovery: Realism and the Aim of Science, London: Hutchinson, 1983; The Open Universe, London: Hutchinson, 1982; Quantum Theory and the Schism in Physics, London: Hutchinson, 1982. In Search of a Better World, London: Routledge, 1992. The Myth of the Framework, London: Routledge, 1994. Die beiden Grundprobleme der Erkenntnistheorie (1930–3), Tuebingen: J.) The Philosophy of Karl Popper, La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1974.
David Miller (ed.) A Pocket Popper, London: Fontana, 1983, contains useful selections from Popper’s work. xi INTRODUCTION I was lucky enough to be taught by Karl Popper, and also to work with him as his assistant for some eight years, between 1971 and 1979. While I gained immensely from this experience, I do not claim, by virtue of this, a privileged position for my interpretation of his views. In addition, any reader of Popper will be familiar with his argument that philosophers have sometimes been betrayed by those who were close to them.
This was his view of the relationship between Socrates and Plato, and also between Kant and Fichte.1 I am, accordingly, acutely aware of the fact that were Popper still with us, he might well see my work in the same light; not least because, as the reader will discover, I wish to argue that Popper’s work has consequences in the political realm which are suggestive of views which are different from those which Popper himself espoused, especially as a young man. My approach to Popper’s early work—notably The Open Society and Its Enemies and The Poverty of Historicism—has been influenced by the older Popper, who in some important respects held views which were different from those of his younger self. I do not mean just his explicitly political views, although there are some differences here. More significant are differences in his views within philosophy.
Popper was never a positivist. But the older Popper’s approach was less positivistic than that of the author of The Open Society. The older Popper was more overtly a scientific realist (although realism in some form was clearly one of Popper’s long- standing concerns 2); he also took the view that metaphysical theories could be made the objects of rational appraisal. 3 In addition, there is a sense in which the author of The Open Society exhibits some affinities with post-modernism; something with which I have no sympathy whatever.
1 I NTRODUCTION The younger Popper and post-modernism share a rejection of historical teleology. With this I am in full agreement. What seems to me less acceptable is the younger Popper’s coming close to the rejection—in some of his criticisms of ‘essentialism’, and in his pursuit of a resolutely pragmatic orientation towards the social— of a realist approach to social science. I will also take issue with his emphasis on individual moral decisions, some of his views concerning which, despite his frequent disclaimers of relativism, come unacceptably close to a form of ethical subjectivism.
I will argue in some detail that there is a—to me more acceptable— fallibilist moral realism to be discerned in his work. I also criticize his account of the value of (subjective) historical interpretation. By way of contrast, I make use of aspects of Popper’s work which are in tension with these ideas. I have in mind here not only his realism, which I will suggest can be extended to the social sciences, and which seems to me to constitute a significant improvement upon the ideas on the status of social science which inform The Open Society.
Perhaps even more important are his Kantian-derived ideas about interpreting objectivity in terms of inter-subjective acceptability. These play an important role in Popper’s work. But their application there is unsystematic, and is intermingled with themes which seem to me more subjectivist in their character. I argue that this Kantian theme should be adopted more systematically.
Doing this would allow one to interpret Popper’s work in a way which avoids those elements that are subjectivist and, to the contemporary palate, post-modernist in their flavour. It would also bring out the respects in which his ideas are close to some themes in the later work of Juergen Habermas. This volume is preliminary in its character—and not only in the sense in which this would be said by any fallibilist. I am acutely aware that my own views on the issues which I am here discussing are themselves in flux, not only as I discover more about Popper’s work, but also as I consider it in relation to other material.
But as the search for an interpretation of Popper’s work in which I can have any real confidence seems to me not only an unended quest, but also possibly an unending one, I feel that I should write now, rather than wait for a conclusion to my research, at which I may never arrive. At the very least, this will mean that others can join in the criticism of the views to which I have at present been led. 2 I NTRODUCTION In this volume, for the most part I consider only Popper’s own views, rather than discussing his interpretation of the work of other people. However, in the re-reading of Popper’s work that I undertook prior to writing the final version of this volume, I was struck, as I had been when working with him, by the immense range of his knowledge.
It is one thing to agree or to disagree with the views that he takes upon various issues; and there have been some serious and interesting treatments of his interpretation of the work of some of the figures whom he discusses. But I found it striking that, for example, The Open Society has been so frequently the subject of disparaging comments from people whom it is difficult to imagine having actually grappled with the work with the effort that it demands. Popper believed that simplicity in writing was an important virtue, not least because of its relation to the possibility of fruitful and rational interchange between people from different backgrounds and intellectual environments. He has commented, when writing about The Open Society, that he had tried to make it readable, and in ways that might mask the scholarship that went into it.4 It is sad that he was all too successful, in the sense that some of his readers do not seem to have had the patience to consider how seriously his argument should be taken.
Popper has also suffered from what Russell Jacoby has described as the decline of the public intellectual.5 During Popper’s lifetime, intellectuals have typically been in retreat from the public realm into the specializations of their varied academic disciplines. It is increasingly expected that academics will address only their peers, and that if anyone is to express a view upon any topic, they must have served their academic apprenticeship in the discipline of which it is a part. The result of all this, however, is a disaster.