Abstract
In an article on Eugene Ionesco’s theatre of the absurd Feyerabend once complained that Ionesco had failed to live up to his own ideal of freedom of Mind: “Ionesco is irritated only by ideologies of his opponents … His own ideas, his works and the sections he approves of in the work of others he regards as established facts beyond the fluctuation of interpretations”. But for this, however, his “art would indeed represent that “liberation” which he claims for art, ‘that apprenticeship to a free mind to which we are no longer accustomed, which we have forgotten, but whose loss is felt as much by those who believe themselves to be free without being so (being prevented by prejudice) as by those who believe they are not or cannot be free’”.1
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Notes
Paul K. Feyerabend, ‘The Theatre as an Instrument of the Criticism of Ideologies: Notes on Ionesco’, Inquiry 10 (1967), p. 299. The enclosed quotation is from E. Ionesco, Notes and Counter-notes, trans. Donald Watson (London: Allen and Unwin, 1964).
Feyerabend, op. cit., p. 299.
Ibid., p. 298
Ibid., p. 307.
Karl Popper, Unended Quest: An Intellectual Autobiography (Glasgow: Fontana/Collins, 1976), pp. 115–116.
Ibid., p. 116.
Ibid., p. 116.
Ibid., p. 115.
Ibid., p. 99.
Ibid., p. 115.
Cf. the following exchange in Paul Feyerabend, ‘Dialogue on Method’, in G. Radnitzky and G. Andersson (eds), The Structure and Development of Science, Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science 59 (Dordrecht/Boston/London: D. Reidel Publishing Co., 1979), pp. 92–93: A says, ‘Critical rationalism … tells you that your attitude towards ideas should be a critical attitude; it tells you that theories will be easier to criticize the more boldly they are presented. It encourages those who have new ideas to introduce them without precautions, in the strongest possible way …’, on which B comments as follows: ‘… from your description one would assume that critical rationalists are free minds who write a vigorous and lively style, who have considered the limits of rationality, who oppose science in its attempt to dominate society, who have found new ways of presenting their views, who make maximum use of media, film, theatre, dialogue in addition to the essay, who have discovered the function of emotions in discourse and … one would assume that they are part of a movement that is interesting, aids people in their desire for freedom and independence and brings out the best in them. Yet what I do see is just another dreary bunch of intellectuals writing in a constipated style, repeating ad nauseam a few basic phrases and being mainly concerned with the development of epicycles to such intellectualist monsters as verisimilitude and content increase. Their pupils are either frightened or nasty, depending on the kind of opposition they encounter … They do not criticize, that is, they do not invent ways of putting things in perspective; they reject what does not suit them …’. In connection with this latter objection see, e.g., P. K. Feyerabend, On the Critique of Scientific Reason’, in R. S. Cohen et al. (eds), Essays in Memory of Imre Lakatos (Dordrecht/Boston/London: D. Reidel Publishing Co., 1976), p. 137, note 5: ‘Critical Rationalists take great care to show that prima facie disreputable procedures in science, when looked at in detail, turn out to be quite acceptable … They also know that there are good scientists and bad scientists and that the procedures of the former are not discredited by the errors of the latter … The attitude towards Marxism, or astrology, or other traditional heresies is very different. Here the most superficial examination and the most shoddy arguments are deemed sufficient’.
Popper, op. cit., p. 115.
I have tried to clarify the mutual dialectics of these two conditions in a subsequent paper, ‘Politics and Feyerabend’s Anarchist’, in M. Dascal and O. Gruengard (eds), Knowledge and Politics (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1989).
Popper, op. cit., p. 115.
Ibid., p. 116
Ibid., p. 116.
Ibid., p. 116.
Ibid., p. 219, note 173
Paul Feyerabend, ‘In Defence of Aristotle: Comments on the Condition of Content Increase’, in G. Radnitzky and G. Andersson (eds), Progress and Rationality in Science. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science 58 (Dordrecht/Boston/London: D. Reidel Publishing Co., 1978), p. 169.
Paul Feyerabend, ‘Democracy, Elitism, and Scientific Method’, Inquiry 28 (1980), p. 11, emphasis removed. Cf. Paul Feyerabend, Science in a Free Society (London: New Left Books, 1978) and Erknenntnis fur freie Menschen (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1980).
Ibid., p. 15, emphasis removed.
Feyerabend, ‘Dialogue on Method’, G. Andersson (eds), The Structure and Development of Science, Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science 59 (Dordrecht/Boston/London: D. Reidel Publishing Co., 1979) op. cit., p. 86.
Feyerabend, ‘Democracy, Elitism, and Scientific Method’, op. cit., p. 14.
Paul Feyerabend, ‘Imre Lakatos’, The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 26 (1975), p. 15.
‘Democracy, Elitism, and Scientific Method’, op. cit., p. 15.
‘In Defence of Aristotle’, G. Andersson (eds), Progress and Rationality in Science. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science 58 (Dordrecht/Boston/London: D. Reidel Publishing Co., 1978) op. cit., p. 168.
‘Imre Lakatos’, op. cit., p. 14; cf. p. 10.
‘Democracy, Elitism, and Scientific Method’, op. cit., p. 7; emphasis added, author’s emphasis removed.
Ibid., p. 17; emphasis added, author’s emphasis removed.
‘In Defence of Aristotle’, G. Andersson (eds), Progress and Rationality in Science. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science 58 (Dordrecht/Boston/London: D. Reidel Publishing Co., 1978) op. cit., p. 169.
‘Imre Lakatos’, op. cit., p. 3.
Ibid., p. 6.
Ibid., p. 6.
‘The Theatre as an Instrument’, op. cit., p. 298; original emphasis.
‘Democracy, Elitism, and Scientific Method’, op. cit., p. 17.
Ibid., p. 17.
Apart from a few stylistic changes and the insertion of Note 13, this final paragraph is the only addition to the original version of this paper that appeared in German in 1980. Feyerabend’s Farewell to Reason (London: Verso) was published in 1987.
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Hannay, A. (1991). Free of Prejudice and Wholly Critical?. In: Munévar, G. (eds) Beyond Reason. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 132. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-3188-9_4
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