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Major Conservative and Libertarian Thinkers
Karl Popper
Karl Popper is best known for his contributions to the philosophy of science and the history of ideas. Elements of Popper's thought were clearly libertarian or conservative in character. His politics, however, were recognisably social democratic. His ideal of an open society was not a free market utopia, but a political community in which diverse people engaged with one another in constructive dialogue to seek political solutions to common problems. If Popper made important and enduring contributions to the libertarian and conservative traditions, it would be a mistake to uncritically label him a conservative or libertarian. Rather, Popper was a scholar who contributed to a range of different fields without being shackled to one particular perspective or approach. It is in this context that we should understand Popper's contribution to libertarian and conservative thought.
- GenresPhilosophyPolitics
184 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2010
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
October 12, 2024
I've had bits of Popper here and there, primarily for the philosophy of science, so to see him in a series on political thinkers was quite an intriguing surprise. Given that background and the very approachable nature of this book, I really enjoyed learning about a different context and position from which Popper, his motivations, and his philosophy could be understood from. I'm not entirely sure how much I agree with some of the book's conclusions, but that's part of why I had a good time reading it. Overall, solid!
October 13, 2016
I read Karl Popper's The Open Society and its Enemies as an undergraduate, at one point by the Murray River (most of the boundary between New South Wales and Victoria) at Easter time, where friends and their father were fishing. I can't remember a thing about its' contents and a little more about Popper's excursus into science and his idea of falsifiability, which came up later in studies in the history and philosophy of science, and later professionally.
When people tend to mention Popper it's generally in the sphere of scientific method, and they usually limit it to one word. I've never heard anyone explain it articulately. in opposition to the view presented by logical positivists, the latter prevalent even in research in personality, where people appear to be routinely mechanistically described and without nuance, which suggests that this method strongly determines an experiment's outcome as you measure what can be measured in a way, which is a little limiting.
Phil Parvin's book appeared in my vision at the right size and the right price. It's 150-odd pages of reading and it's organised into first saying something about Popper, intellectual background influences and his travels, then his ideas, followed by what others thought of them and his contemporary relevance. The book is part of a series on major conservative and libertarian thinkers, which somewhat surprised me as a category, although I'd never placed Popper in one anyway.
I enjoyed the description of how he wrote The Open Society and the responses to it. This and the series title helped me understand why this was set for Politics 101 by the lecturer, Hugo Wolfson, a quietly agreeable conservative man – "Marx was not a pleasant man!" – who also set material from the English conservative thinker Michael Oakeshott. None of this appeared injudicious to me, they were just ideas, although interestingly Popper was perceived by others as a bit dogmatic in his assertions.
Popper was against what he called "historicism" which appears to be in part the imputation of a process in history that leads to a future society, such as Marx' perspective. He thought we couldn't know the future and had a gradualist idea of dealing with social issues, and it is this position of being against any social engineering as well as his friendship with Friedrich von Hayek that lumps him into the area of conservative thought. But Parvin shows that this is at best an uneasy fit and that Popper favoured an interventionist state as far as protecting the people, education and health, so hardly a neo-liberal.
There are the usual editorial glitches in the text, for these days, anyway, but I really enjoyed this book. It's clearly written, explains things well and I felt sufficiently informed to want to retain it on my shelves, which isn't a given with things I read.
When people tend to mention Popper it's generally in the sphere of scientific method, and they usually limit it to one word. I've never heard anyone explain it articulately. in opposition to the view presented by logical positivists, the latter prevalent even in research in personality, where people appear to be routinely mechanistically described and without nuance, which suggests that this method strongly determines an experiment's outcome as you measure what can be measured in a way, which is a little limiting.
Phil Parvin's book appeared in my vision at the right size and the right price. It's 150-odd pages of reading and it's organised into first saying something about Popper, intellectual background influences and his travels, then his ideas, followed by what others thought of them and his contemporary relevance. The book is part of a series on major conservative and libertarian thinkers, which somewhat surprised me as a category, although I'd never placed Popper in one anyway.
I enjoyed the description of how he wrote The Open Society and the responses to it. This and the series title helped me understand why this was set for Politics 101 by the lecturer, Hugo Wolfson, a quietly agreeable conservative man – "Marx was not a pleasant man!" – who also set material from the English conservative thinker Michael Oakeshott. None of this appeared injudicious to me, they were just ideas, although interestingly Popper was perceived by others as a bit dogmatic in his assertions.
Popper was against what he called "historicism" which appears to be in part the imputation of a process in history that leads to a future society, such as Marx' perspective. He thought we couldn't know the future and had a gradualist idea of dealing with social issues, and it is this position of being against any social engineering as well as his friendship with Friedrich von Hayek that lumps him into the area of conservative thought. But Parvin shows that this is at best an uneasy fit and that Popper favoured an interventionist state as far as protecting the people, education and health, so hardly a neo-liberal.
There are the usual editorial glitches in the text, for these days, anyway, but I really enjoyed this book. It's clearly written, explains things well and I felt sufficiently informed to want to retain it on my shelves, which isn't a given with things I read.
January 26, 2016
My primary reason to read a biography on Popper was to know "who this man, that Taleb kept talking about?" While, being heavily influenced by Taleb's philosophy, it became apparent that to understand more of Taleb, I had to understand his own influences, one of them being Karl Popper.
Unlike other biographies on philosophers (and I have read very few), Parvin makes this simple to understand. It does not take a trained mind to understand the simplicity of Popper's conjectures and posits on what knowledge is generally gathered and the way it should be gathered.
Not limiting himself to science alone, Popper extends his views to knowledge on the whole and it is interesting to note that the methods Popper proposes are common, are actually common.
Biographies are generally boring, but that's my view. If I wanted to read Philosophy, I should have picked one of the few books that Popper himself wrote. Nevertheless, even though the book belongs to the 'boring' genre (at least for me), it is a good read and gives a peek to the readers inside the mind of one of the great 20th century philosophers.
Unlike other biographies on philosophers (and I have read very few), Parvin makes this simple to understand. It does not take a trained mind to understand the simplicity of Popper's conjectures and posits on what knowledge is generally gathered and the way it should be gathered.
Not limiting himself to science alone, Popper extends his views to knowledge on the whole and it is interesting to note that the methods Popper proposes are common, are actually common.
Biographies are generally boring, but that's my view. If I wanted to read Philosophy, I should have picked one of the few books that Popper himself wrote. Nevertheless, even though the book belongs to the 'boring' genre (at least for me), it is a good read and gives a peek to the readers inside the mind of one of the great 20th century philosophers.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews