Abstract
In the controversy over neo-Marxist Ideologies, as well as in the discussion of the basic values of political parties, Karl Raimund Popper’s philosophy of Critical Rationalism has often been called upon to defend, by reference to the values of political Liberalism, the idea both of the free constitutional state and the Western political system of parliamentary democracy.1 Certainly Popper’s antitotalitarian social philosophy represents one of the few interesting philosophical alternatives to the pseudohumanistic authoritarian ideologies of the Left (and also the Right). The values of political Liberalism, which are the basic assumptions of Popper’s political philosophy, are not accompanied by an economic “laissez faire”-Liberalism, as has often been claimed by Critical Rationalism’s adversaries on the Left. It is evident, that despite Popper’s arguments for the greatest possible individual freedom and for the limitation of the power of the state, he explicitly demands that unrestricted capitalism be replaced by an “economic interventionism”.
Translated from the German by Dr. John Krois (Ed.).
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Notes
Cf. Ralf Dahrendorf, ‘Ungewißheit, Wissenschaft und Demokratie’, in Konflikt und Freiheit, edited by Ralf Dahrendorf München 1972), pp. 292f.
Ernst Topitsch, ‘Der Gegenspieler der Utopien Vorbild für die Macher des Machbaren: Sir Karl Popper und die Ideen des Kritischen Rationalismus”, Deutsche Zeitung, No. 35, 22 August 1975
Warnfried Dettling, ‘Der kritische Rationalismus und die Programmatik der CDU’, in Zur Programmatik der CDU, edited by Wulf Schönbohm (Bonn, 1974), pp. 78ff;
Georg Lührs and Thilo Sarazin, et al., (eds.), Kritischer Rationalismus und Sozialdemokratie (2 vols., Berlin and Bonn, 1975–1976).
Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies (2 vols., London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1974), Vol 2, p. 125.
See Karl Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery (London: Hutchinson, 1959);
See Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies; and The Poverty of Historicism ( London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1957 ).
On this question see Popper himself in The Philosophy of Karl Popper, 2 vols., edited by Paul Arthur Schilpp (La Salle, 1974), I, 91ff.
Cf. John W. Watkins, ‘K. R. Popper: Die Einheit seines Denkens’, in Grundprobleme der großen Philosophen — Philosophie der Gegenwart I, edited by Josef Speck (Göttingen, 1972), pp. 151 ff;
Gerard Radnitzky, ‘Philosophie und Wissenschaftstheorie zwischen Wittgenstein und Popper’, in Östereichische Philosophen und ihr Einfluss auf die Philosophie der Gegenwart, edited by Johann C. Marek and Josef Zeiger et al. (Innsbruck and München, 1977), Vol. I, p. 279.
See also Helmut F. Spinner, Popper und die Politik (Berlin and Bonn, 1978), Vol. I, pp. 103ff. This work contains helpful clarifications even though it is otherwise difficult to read because of its unnecessarily polemic style and its many redundancies.
On this variety of ideology critique see the appropriate chapters in the volumes Ideologie, Ideologiekritik und Wissenssoziologie, edited by Kurt Lenk (5th ed., Neuwied, 1971)
Ideologie-Wissenschaft-Gesellschaft, edited by Hans-Joachim Lieber (Darmstadt, 1976).
This definition is also found in an slightly different version in my book Ideologie-Wissenschaft-Politik: Sozialphilosophische Studien (Graz and Wien, 1975), pp. 43f and in Ernst Topitsch and Kurt Salamun, Ideologie: Herrschaft des Vor-Urteils (München, 1972), pp. 53f.
Hans Albert, Traktakt über kritische Vernunft (Tübingen, 1968), p. 87; cf. also Albert’s criticism of the all too narrow positivistic approach followed by Theodor Geiger, who attempted to distinguish ideology from non-ideology purely upon the basis of the logic of language;
See Hans Albert, Konstruktion und Kritik: Aufsätze zur Philosophie des kritischen Rationalismus (Hamburg, 1972), pp. 168ff.
Cf. Hans Albert, Traktat über kritische Vernunft, op. cit. pp. 93ff.
Popper, The Open Society, op. cit., Vol. II, p. 235.
Henri Tajfel, ‘Soziales Kategorisieren’, in Forschungsgebiete der Sozialpsychologie (Frankfurt, 1975), p. 347.
Cf. also Walter Dieckmann, Information oder Überredung: Zum Wortgebrauch der politischen Werbung in Deutschland seit der Französischen Revolution (Marburg, 1964), p. 152f;
Karl Dietrich Bracher, Die deutsche Diktatur: Entstehung, Struktur, Folgen des Nationalsozialismus (Köln and Berlin, 1969), pp. 25ff.
Karl Dietrich Bracher, Die deutsche Diktatur: Entstehung, Struktur, Folgen des Nationalsozialismus (Köln and Berlin, 1969), pp. 155ff.
Popper, The Open Society, op. cit., Vol. I, pp. 43.
Popper, The Open Society, op. cit., Vol. I, pp. 198.
Cf. Muzafer Sherif, ‘Subordinate Goals in the Reduction of Intergroup Conflict’, in American Journal of Sociology 63 (1958), 349ff;
Dorwin Cartwright and Alwin Zander (eds.), Group Dynamics: Research and Theory (3rd ed., London, 1970), pp. 80ff.
Popper, The Open Society, op. cit., Vol. II, p. 95.
This political propaganda strategy is analysed, among other writers, by T. D. Weldon, Kritik der politischen Sprache (Neuwied, 1962), pp. 30ff;
This political propaganda strategy is analysed, among other writers, by T. D. Weldon, Kritik der politischen Sprache (Neuwied, 1962), pp. 30ff and 64ff;
Hermann Lübbe, Der Streit um Worte: Sprache und Politik (Bochum, 1967 ).
On this distinction, cf. among others Martin Seliger, ‘Fundamental and Operative Ideology: The two Dimensions of Political Argumentation’, in Policy Sciences 1 (1970), 325ff
Martin Seliger, Ideology and Politics (London, 1976), pp. 108ff;
Peter C. Ludz, ‘Entwurf einer operationalen Theorie des Ideologiebegriffs’, in Lieber, Ideologie-Wissenschaft-Gesellschaft, op. cit., pp. 492ff;
Peter Ludz, Ideologiebegriff und marxistische Theorie (Opladen, 1976), pp. 86ff.
Popper, The Open Society, op. cit., Vol. I, pp. 138ff.
Karl Popper, Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge ( London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1963 ), p. 9.
Cf. Hans Albert, Marktsoziologie und Entscheidungslogik (Neuwied, 1967), pp. 338ff, 360.
On the different variations of the genetic fallacy see Norwood R. Hanson, ‘The Genetic Fallacy Revisited’, American Philosophical Quarterly 4 (1967), 101–113.
Popper, The Open Society, op. cit., Vol. II, p. 251f, 255, 216.
Ibid., p. 216.
Popper, The Open Society, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 35.
Cf. Ibid., pp. 57, 73.
On the political relevance of this distinction see also Gerard Radnitzky, ‘Die Sein-Sollen-Unterscheidung als Voraussetzung der liberalen Demokratie’, in Sozialphilosophie als Aufklärung: Festschrift für Ernst Topitsch, edited by Kurt Salamun (Tübingen, 1979), pp. 459ff.
This aspect of ideologies is especially emphasized in Theodor Geiger, Ideologie und Wahrheit: Eine soziologische Kritik des Denkens (2nd ed., Neuwied, 1968); G. Bergmann, ‘Ideology’, in his book The Metaphysics of Logical Positivism (New York, 1954), pp. 300ff;
Ernst Topitsch, Sozialphilosophie zwischen Ideologie und Wissenschaft (3rd ed., Neuwied, 1971), pp. 32ff.
Hans Albert, Traktat über kritische Vernunft, op. cit., p. 81.
See Karl Popper, ‘Zur Logik der Sozialwissenschaften’, in Theodor W. Adorno and Hans Albert et al., Der Positivismusstreit in der deutschen Soziologie (Neuwied, 1969), pp. 112ff;
The Open Society, op. cit., Vol. II p. 217ff.
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Salamun, K. (1985). The Problem of Ideology and Critical Rationalism. In: Andersson, G. (eds) Rationality in Science and Politics. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 79. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-6254-5_14
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