The reason this entire response (here, the first part) was made is simple: Popper can be dangerous. He can be dangerous precisely because he is not threatening. There is nothing philosophically in itself particularly dangerous with Popper, he is not a reductionist of any kind, he allows room for Metaphysics, he dislikes totalitarianism and positivism… For a philosopher as such, or a layman, reading Popper out of devotion to truth is not particularly dangerous. The story runs differently when someone is investing effort to change the world… In that case, Popper is the worst consumable possible. Bad jokes aside, the whole problem of Popper is how he changes the spirit of the reader, because his style makes the reader think about thinks in a certain way, at least, if he is not aware. Staying on topic, what is going to be scientifically, at least in pretention, considered here is not Karl Popper´s philosophy but rather Karl Popper’s style.
What is style? The word structure would immediately give a, while still vague, more at hand glimpse, but it would not be precise. Style here has nothing to do with the language, the prose, the literary expression of Karl Popper’s recorded speeches or books. Style is here understood to be the manner of exposition and framework Karl Popper makes use of. While style can only be accessed by historical enquiry, by “understanding”, it is not any form of deep psychology. Simply put, it is to ask, for example with Nietzsche, what relationship there is between Nietzsche’s decision to use a narration, aphorism and prose in relationship to his philosophical ideas, and this not extrinsically, understanding them to be products of social condition or fancy, but as the adequate frame of his philosophy, without which it would simply not be Nietzsche. Without studying “style” it is impossible to understand what kind of thinker and, more importantly here, actor Karl Popper fosters, style gives access to the ordering of ideas, objective purposes and moving elements of a philosophy and a philosopher. To make it simple, a philologist would study Karl Popper as literature, as linguistic productions of writing and speech, trying to interpret the works themselves. On the other hand, what John Arcto did was study the System of Karl Popper, the ideas and principles themselves. Style, put simply, is something in between. Much more could be said about this approach, which is not in any way unique, but definitely not very much known, not even among hermeneuticians (whose ignorance concerning such a method gives this writer peace of mind)1. The best way to see if this method has any truth to it, is to see if it can solve the dispute between Arcto and Woods.
Clio’s Revenge
History is the life of ideas. What John Arcto has given us is the logical structure, the system of Popperian philosophy. On this point any remarks that can be done are left for other texts, for anyone willing to, at bare minimum, explain why it is ridiculous for Karl Popper to call Plato a historicist.
Now, the manner in which, the style of Karl Popper’s epistemology and political philosophy will be looked upon, is sociological and stylistic, as was explained, rather than philosophical. There is need for understanding.
A good point to start, so as to get the gist of Popper, are the language games his philosophy use, specifically, his terms. Words are signs, by definition, they point towards the content and meaning of things, so they are a safe point of departure for this enquiry. A good definition, brought by Anglofuturist, of Popperian Political Philosophy is defensive pluralism2:
Karl Popper’s maxim of a ‘defensively pluralistic’ society… would be a vast improvement over our own, and one we must fight for.
The adjective, “defensive” is, of course, a defence, it is here to express that Karl Popper wants to preserve something, rather than conquer something. In this sense, offensive pluralism, if such a thing exists, would mean a pluralism that has to be taken and occupied. On the other hand, pluralism is meant to say there is a variety of things, instead of one. Politically, pluralism is the idea that humans are incommensurable, that they have different ultimate ends that are distinct and maybe even conflicting with those of others, pluralism derives from diversity, and diversity being a given fact of human life, be it based upon human nature, historical development, evolution or whatever. Pluralism is to allow everyone to choose there own salvation, paraphrasing . The pluralism Popper is thinking about, then, is not a metaphysical kind, rather, it is a plural society, and not one thought as a good in and of itself, but one thought in opposition to a threat, because it is an alternative to a non plural society (i.e. communism and fascism). This political philosophy is of course opposed, historically, to both fascism and communism. On this point, one can see that “Defensive Pluralism”, or “The Open Society” is, stylistically, thought against its enemies. It originates as a response to fascism and communism, a response derived from a opposition to this ideologies and therefore, ultimately, a negation of those same ideologies.
Both Critical Rationalism and Empirical Falsificationism are even clearer. What Karl Popper adds to two existent currents, rationalism and empiricism, are limitations “Critical” and “Falsificiationsim”. If Verificationism makes empiricism concrete, Falsificationism is not so much a definition of empirical validity but rather a restriction of it. In other words, first, the logical empiricists developed the idea of verification, in turn, Popper opposed this idea and understood that validity is best framed as falsifying, that is, the property that propositions have of potentially being shown to be erroneous. Critical, on the other hand, next to rationalism is very wide. Critical is after all a nice sounding word since Immanuel Kant became relevant, there are gazillion books, specially from the XIX century using this word, it is, in a way, a flattering word, thought in opposition to “naïve”. Thus, next to critical realism is naïve realism, next to naïve or dogmatic rationalism is critical rationalism. Thus, “Critical” basically amounts to correcting oneself without fear, sapere aude, dear to know yes, but dear to know the limits of your knowledge. With Karl Popper, however, critical conveys a valuation of correction and refinement of preciously stated positions, at some point Karl Popper said that philosophy starts with myth and the criticism of myth, in this sentence the Popperian understanding of criticism can be found. One gathers by looking at the main words of his system already a significant indication of what Karl Popper’s style is. The names are essentially corrections, in his own lingo, falsifications of other previously existing schools. His own “framework” for philosophy, call it Critical Rationalism or Empirical Falsificationism, is already thought as a correction of others rather than a framework on its own, more accurately put, Karl Popper contributes to empiricism and rationalism by negating a part of them, i.e., by negating verification and dogmatism, by rejecting Neopositivism and epistemological certainty (which in turn fosters ideological thinking and therefore fosters totalitarianism).
In philosophy, the negation of another school’s doctrine or system can be called pars destruens, and such a negation is always put next to one’s own proposed system, the pars construens. The thing with Karl Popper, however, is that there is, truth be told, no pars construens beyond his critic. That is, when he is finished with positivism, he leaves it at that, negation or pars destruens is all that is left when he is finished. The style of Karl Popper, it is seen, is to construct by denying. Nothing surprising here, his idea of science is not far from this model.
The open society is born from the negation of totalitarianism, which Popper knew all too well. Falsificationism came from negating (correcting) Neopositivist. Karl Popper, with this (implicit) negation of the “closed society” intends to put a speed limiter on political action so to speak (society is pluralistic, and tolerance reaches all except the intolerant) and he puts a speed limiter on science, saying that it is not able to know truth, but test that it is valid (until further notice). Historically then, Karl Popper developed his core epistemology and political philosophy against totalitarianism and Neopositivism, and he in turn wanted to define the limits of civic liberty and end the naïve faith positivism has in science. Simply put, a short excursion into the wording of his philosophy, thought in relationship to the most general historical circumstance, already finds that both Karl Popper’s epistemology and his political philosophy style themselves by criticism which, on inspection, operates by negating.
Is there something else here? There might be, this is scratching the surface, and this “historical account” can easily slip into an ad hominem attack. A glimpse of Karl Popper’s negative style has been given, but to avoid misrepresentation of his philosophy, going to the roots is needed.
The uniqueness of Karl Popper
Negation is an act of reason, a proposition where the predicate excludes something from the subject. Negativism, however, is a historical style of thought, found under certain circumstances in contemporary history. It is a word that was coined by the philosopher and father of sociology Auguste Comte, he used it so as to label many of his former followers and describe what is wrong with many worldviews of his time, among others: atheism. Negativism is quite simple to define: It is to style one’s thinking as rejection of some positive doctrine, rather than a contribution of its own. In the lingo of generation Z, “negativism” might be called “coping”, and it would not be a bad way to convey what was meant by Auguste Comte when he called out people for being “negativists”. The style of Karl Popper’s philosophy is best understood as “negativism”, in turn, negativism originates historically with the rejection of the most radical claims of the father of positivism by his disciples, and philosophically from the effort to limit the danger discovered in politics and science. Karl Popper’s situation with logical positivism is parallel to the situation Émile Littré or John Stuart Mill, the two most renowned disciples of Auguste Comte (the first in France and the latter in England)
What is negativism? Auguste Comte’s thought about atheism is a good illustration of what negativism is. Auguste Comte, famous for being the father of positivism, his disdain for metaphysics and surely not one fond of praying the rosary, never considered himself an atheist and, in fact, despised such a worldview. The father of positivism despised atheism because, despite what may be believed about his religiosity, he could not bear hostility towards religion. To be fair, Aguste Comte would definitely argue against real religions, that is, against all the religions he did not propose, religions that were old and did not stand scientific scrutiny, such as Christianity. But Auguste Comte actually despised atheist more than he might have despised Catholics or Muslims, and to be fair, he might have despised protestants more than he despised atheist (but, again to be fair, he did not think they were much different). Beyond his disdain for people “without musical taste for religion”3
Negation offers but a feeble and precarious basis for union: and disbelief in Monotheism is of itself no better proof of a mind fit to grapple with the questions of the day than disbelief in Polytheism or Fetishism, which no one would maintain to be an adequate ground for claiming intellectual sympathy. The atheistic phase indeed was not really necessary, except for the revolutionists of the last century who took the lead in the movement towards radical regeneration of society. The necessity has already ceased; for the decayed condition of the old system makes the need of regeneration palpable to all.
In other words, Auguste Comte saw atheism as a phase, both a historical phase and a personal phase, in a way, like it is right now for most people, a phase who all go through in adolescence (even though adolescence is, in this age, gradually eating up the time of man’s other stages of life). Auguste Comte, however, thought this of atheists in the first half of the XIX century, he considered negation to be, as one can see, a historical phase, part of a process. Read for our age, he might call atheists “retrograde”. Anything, in the XIX century, thought about sub specie aeternitatis, as permanent and unchanging, was considered naïve at best, usually as retrograde. But bashing atheist such as Cristopher hitches or Richard Dawkins, while a sport one from time to time needs to take part in, is not the concern of this writ.
The important thing here is in the first line, marked by Yours Truly: Negation offers but a feeble and precarious basis for union. This line is important because, if one is honest, how can one not see that, a century prior, Auguste Comte is stating with scientific rigour why Karl Popper’s alternative to Positivism fails on the basis of first principle? The point here is not to confront one dead man with another, it was to define what is meant by “negativism”, and, in doing so, give some credit to the much misunderstood and unread thinker Auguste Comte..
The entire system of Karl Popper, both in its epistemological line of Critical rationalism and in its political expression of the Open Society, follows a recognizable pattern, an unmistakable style. Evidently, Karl Popper thought his main ideas and principles in a general framework of first, opposition to certain ideas, second, criticism of those ideas, third, rest this entire operation on a negation of what is wrong, presupposing something positive outside of the scope of his own philosophy, if at all.
What is Karl Popper’s principle? The principles might be empiricism, positivism or liberalism, that can the historian of philosophy discuss. The problem here is what moves his entire philosophy, what animates it, this can be asserted fearlessly: It is the negation of things that he finds to be wrong. As commentators of his work tend to point out, there is an intrinsic philosophical link between his epistemology and his politics, this unity becomes clearer when one understands that epistemologically and politically Karl Popper is bent on denying ideas he considers dangerous, maliciously said, policing them: Politically he wants to negate what he considers to be totalitarianism and its platonic roots, epistemologically Verificationism and its positivistic roots. Before we go on, there is one important reservation that can be held against this way of framing Karl Popper’s entire endeavour.
Why frame his entire philosophy as a negation? As any rational animal and philosopher is it not good enough to say that Karl Popper thinks considering what others have said, and acknowledging that he disagrees and therefore deny what some of them have held, without this making him determined to defend, fatally, a certain worldview? Why can one not acknowledge that it so happened that he found out that Falsificationism was the criteria and Openness the ideal when he was confronted with those who opposed them as principles? Here we return to the quote of Auguste Comte: Everyone has to reject and refute other positions, but only negativist style and frame their philosophy as critical criticism or opposition to ideas.. Falsification is, even logically, to put “no” next to a predicate. If falsification is a process of scientific enquiry, then at some point negative claims are what makes a certain body of propositions and knowledge scientific. If openness is the defining characteristic of the good society, then it is no longer even the negative aspect of human liberty because there is no higher goal or liberty by which to call it negative, because the main goal of openness is openness itself, its only goal is to avoid a closed and total society, not any good form of society. One can of course, minimize this practical danger of his system by stating that he did correct the idea making falsification into a habit, a method of enquiry rather than a systematically required tool, and he did see that there where other social goods, he defended to great length the ideal of the social engineer. Put simply, to deny what is wrong, to make criticism, presupposes some higher form of truth. One criticizes x because it goes against what one already knows, not the other way around. The problem is that Karl Popper never framed it in such a way, one might charitably suppose this, and to understand that rejection rests upon asserted principles is common sense and human nature. But, by doing such, it is a wider knowledge of the reader and maybe acknowledged subjectively by Popper, not found in the style of the philosopher. Admittedly, Karl Popper considered negation and criticism more fundamental to philosophy than any other contribution, both his thoughts and his own activity as a philosopher speak louder than any added context by the commentator. History, by itself, does not show the logic of ideas, but their life.
Why focus on his philosophy being styled as a negation? That question answers itself by appeal to common sense, the lest common of the senses: Mere negation does not contribute an affirmation, breaking a glass does not make us rich. In the words of Karl Marx: The negation of negation is not what is positive, it is not what is.
From openness to wokeness.
All political philosophy is built on an idea of an ultimate common good for society4. Therefore, it is fair to ask what Karl Popper considers to be the criterion of a good political order. When one looks for the ultimate goal of the Popperian philosophy, one sees that it is no different than his political goal, in style: His ultimate goal is to negate what he sees as an ultimate evil, but he has, strictly speaking, no ultimate goal that allows him to call out threatening views as evil. Popper’s criterion for political order is the threats of totalitarianism themselves, accordingly, he tries to find a political philosophy that can defend man against totalitarianism, therefore, totalitarianism is more fundamental, for Popper, than pluralism, at least in a philosophical sense, if not subjectively or value wise.
In other words, the book is actually not so much concerned with the Open Society. Karl Popper is not interested in proposing the Open Society as an ideal, even if he might often talk about its virtues and greatness. In other words, the book is about the Closed Society, and pluralism is interesting insofar as it can stop such a society. Karl Popper defends pluralism so as to negate totalitarianism, not the other way, that is the reason, aptly put, for why his philosophy is “defensive”, in the sense that Comte gave this word, i.e., negativistic5.
A very important diagnosis of negativism is that negativistic philosophies tend towards a paranoid attitude against that which they oppose. This is a very simple idea, one that can be explained, although with risk, by psychological jargon. If one only looks for what is wrong and ignores what is good by system, one tends to be an irritable person, because one only sees enemies and threats around. More importantly, however is the fact that negativism can only exist so as to deny another idea, negativism can often develop a parasitic relation with its host, in a similar fashion to politicians developing a parasitic relation with the historical enemy of the nation. Negativistic philosophies, put simply, are designed to criticise and therefore politically to be a place force, metaphorically. This was Auguste Comte´s criticism of metaphysics, understood to be modern philosophy from the XVII century onwards, and of Immanuel Kant. One can clearly see similarities with this negativism he diagnosed, as a father of sociology, and Karl Popper.
A great example with which to start is how paradoxical the entire premise of “The Open Society and its enemies” is. Karl Popper, methodologically, choses to look at the history of Western thought in its entirety, to this extent, he does nothing extraordinary. To choose Plato specifically as the father of the “closed society”, could be seen to be the preference for criticism over tradition, common since the Enlightenment at least. No, what makes him negativistic in a philosophical sense is to see the operation of tracing Platonism up to the present and, more importantly, identifying it with the main line of Western philosophy. To trace such a lineage of Platonism is what makes him so, because there is no need for Plato to understand Hitler, no more than to understand any other philosopher of history (since western philosophy is Plato’s commentary, he could simply take it has granted). Logically, this is coherent with his position, but, when it comes to style, Popper is being very historicistic in his anti-historicism by substituting a grand fatalistic reading of History with a grand fatalistic criticism of it. To “Philosophical negativism” then, one can attribute philosophical paranoia based upon Karl popper’s treatment of Plato and Platonism: Philosophical paranoia is to have a puritanical style towards the tradition of western philosophy, and consider oneself tasked to regulate and intervene where necessary, to be a police force, rather than the inheritor of that tradition. In other words, philosophical paranoia is the consequence of relativism: Since the only absolute principle is the relativity of everything, one becomes paranoid in one’s effort to purge thought of dogmatism, imitating the zeal of the dogmatist, one uses totalitarian means for non totalitarian ends. Paranoia does not come logically from Karl Popper’s relativism, it comes practically however, because the relativity of everything requires constant policing, so that dogmatism or absolutism do not make a counterrevolution.
To focus upon the closed society is analogous, admitedly, to focusing on power, as Foucault those, or upon negative critique, literally, as Herbert Marcuse. In a similar way, the new American right, the one born under the Cold War to cope against communism, spearheaded by William F. Buckley, the newer American conservative (as distinct from the “old right”) moved away from isolationist foreign policy and classically right wing stances about central government, they went hard on foreign policy, and soft on civil liberties. Why did William F Buckley believe that the state needed to grow and war needed to be financed? That is right: communism. To destroy communist totalitarianism one needed to make a grand managerial war machine, one needed to fight the total soviet state with a more total American state. What the new conservatives and liberals described as “socialism” or “totalitarianism” and their means to combat it were similar, in a way6.
Conservativism can be left for another day, the same as with atheism, the comparison with Marcuse and Buckley was done so as to show that “paranoia” is not unique to Popper, but a common and understandable trait of right wingers and left wingers after two world wars, the result of negativism becoming a feature rather than a bug. All this is meant to say that Karl Popper is logically opposed to political correctness, censoring and relativistic totalitarianism, but he requires such in practice, and this cannot be seen by studying his system of philosophy, but only understood by looking at the consequences of ideas sociologically. When looked at closely, Karl Popper’s Open Society is born out of paranoia, and paranoia is, at heart, found to be built upon fear. Karl Popper is one more in a list of people, from the anticommunistic right to the antifascist left, that have served to create a society of fear, the dictatorship of relativism and, ultimately, Wokstery. Primum vivere, deinde philosophari.
The case of Karl Popper is even more interesting, so much so that he can be treated on his own account, rather than by comparing him to others. Karl Popper was not a communist or a Marxist, nor was he committed to the positivistic dream of a technocratic and futuristic society, truly, he was not devoted to liberalism. He was also not particularly conservative or nationalistic, and, being a liberal, he was a liberal of a soft variety, not a pure breed classical liberal such as Ludwig von Mises. Karl Popper was not committed to a theory of politics or history, such as a Marxist, to a certain cultural and social outlook, such as conservatives are, not even to strict principles, such as Ludwig von Mises. He was the perfect moderate, a softy. While critically building on the Vienna Circle, he did not need to save in any way their logical positivism/empiricism, free from attachments, bound by negation. Karl Popper works hard to refute positivism and its confidence in science, with the same zeal that Derrida works hard to deconstruct Claude Levi Strauss or any view which takes itself too seriously, even when critiquing. The difference, is that Popper had no Marxist past, nor a theory, he did not even identify with the positivism of the Circle nor with the socialism of his youth, therefore, his negativistic outlook was even stronger. He was fuelled by no other impulse than critique, nobody on the postmodern front could beat him at this. His price? To be the emptiest.
Negativism produces paranoia but, on a more base level it produces, well, negative attitudes, feelings of disgust and vitriol, it makes people irritable and wake up with the wrong foot. Such feelings of disgust and vitriol are not to be censored here. Being legitimate passions, however, they are not enough because the only way to move away from something philosophically is to actually offer an alternative. Passionate disgust with what is seen to be evil is best taken care of and fostered with the arts like poetry or painting or music; but reading Popper will not refine just anger; anger will be emptied of reason, justice will leave no traces, and the vitriol of smart people playing dumb idiots will take over.
The metaphysics of negativity
Falsificationism is an epistemological theory, positivism is an entire worldview which, although chiefly philosophical, can be found in literary expression, in politics or even in ordinary speech. Journals of ink have been filled trying to settle the question is Karl Popper a positivist? From a philosophical point of view, this question is worth asking, but from a sociological point of view, such a question is a categorical error, it would be like comparing the discipline of physics with a specific theory. The original interest of John Arcto for Karl Popper’s Falsificationism is its importance so as to refute pseudoscientific theories upheld by the force of political correctness and wokeness. And, at the same time, push back the tendency many right wingers show towards denying scientific inquiry itself. What is the problem? That Critical Rationalism, on its own and granting its entire truth, cannot work to combat worldviews. And, sadly, diluted Positivism and Wokstery have something in common: They bring to the table not only pretended scientific theories, but a worldview that gives meaning to science.
There is, however, more to the story, because Karl Popper’s Falsificationism has two sides. On the one hand, Critical Rationalism is an epistemological theory that explains the method of science, this point has been touched upon by John Arcto and will not be commented upon further. On the other hand, though, Critical Rationalism answers the question about the a priori values of sciences, i.e., the ethos of science as a human activity and the axiology. Critical Rationalism, then, gives us the method of science and the morality of science. This “morality of science” however, needs to be defined: Critical Rationalism or Falsificationism is the a priori metascientific commitments of science qua rational and methodological activity in pursuit of truth, and not qua science. This second understanding of Critical Rationalism is not touched upon by John Arcto, but it can also be found in Karl Popper’s work, specially, towards the end of his life. This second sense of Critical Rationalism as “metascience”, however, allows us to stay in the realm of sociology, because it allows us to talk of Critical Rationalism as the moral presuppositions of scientific enquiry and, by extension, historically rooted actions and ideas.
Karl Popper’s epistemology is discovered to be both a method of science and the metascientific (ethical) presuppositions of science, taken together, it is fair to say that Critical Rationalism offers a “worldview” of science, in the same way Marxism, Wokeness or Positivism do; there is, however, a recurring trend appearing also here: Negativism. What distinguishes Karl Popper’s understanding of science from the other three can be called negativism, and negativism fits Popperian epistemology better than it does even Popperian Political philosophy.
Why does negativism seamlessly fit here? Because only when one studies Karl Popper’s philosophy of science can one manage to distinguish criticism and negativism. Politically, it is true that Karl Popper shows hints of negativism in his treatment of Plato and his antitotalitarian relativism or pluralism. But epistemologically there is no discussion, because Karl Popper does not make criticism of ideas a part of science, or even the method of science, rather, he makes criticism the distinguishing value of science. In other words, he considers not criticism but commitment to criticism essential so as to demarcate science. Even further: Karl Popper considers commitment to criticism methodologically prior to criticism itself. Such an understanding of science is very different from the understanding of science that Auguste Comte, for example, had.
Why not compare positivism and negativism? If Karl Popper is right, science is critical. But, if Karl Popper is right, science is essentially criticism and, even worse, if Karl Popper is right, there is nothing that science can do against pseudoscience’s metascientific and ethical claims, which are the truly important claims most of the time7. To be sure, science can fight against pseudoscience, against theories that are pseudoscientific, but against any form of knowledge that claims the mantle of science at the same time as it implies larger metascientific scopes, Karl Popper is lost. The kind of pseudoscience Popper is concerned about, that is, things like psychoanalysis and scientific socialism are incommensurable, they fall outside of the scope of science as it is defined by Critical Rationalism and, by the their strength of their appeal and unexplained explanatory power, the Critical Rationalist has to retreat. Karl Popper, to be sure, does not want science to be deconstructed, but practically speaking, he is leaving science at the mercy of deconstruction when he takes it to be an asymptotic process of falsification. The Popperian worldview, in the best case scenario where it is true, will give Positivism (Or whoever it is contending, like Wokstery) a useful critique which they will be able to take and move one without being halted. In the best case scenario, Karl Popper will correct the epistemology of critical theorists or Marxists, they will accept his remarks, and move one unmoved and unscathed when it comes to their political commitments. When push comes to show, Critical Rationalism is found to barely be sustainable as a worldview, and it is seen that it quickly collapses under the weight of non negative, uncritical or even naïve worldviews. Criticism needs people who do not follow falsification to exist, so as to have itself reason to exist, but not the other way around. Would there be police if there were no thiefs?
Karl Popper’s view of science is actually better framed as a tragic view of science. Science is a critique hard to accept for most worldviews, that leaves man with certainties but no truths, and man, with this weapon, becomes vulnerable to more radical political projects such as Marxism or Positivistic technocracy, even worse, it becomes prone to deconstruction. If Popper is correct, science is tragic in nature, truly.
The aftermath of Karl Popper’s philosophy of science is known to most. After his work came Paul Feyerabend and Thomas Kuhn, and they are seen as the “antagonists” of Karl Popper’s work or, more indulgent, those that correct him together with Imre Lakatos. Again, such a reading is based on analysis, not on history. Historically, the tragic view of science that Popper has contains the same critical strength that Positivism or Rationalism had, but takes away the larger project that made criticism meaningful beyond the pure indulgence of criticism. Positivism wanted to focus science towards building a orderly and progressive society, ending the revolutionary times that happened as a necessary consequences of the (seen as inevitable) demise of Christianity (which inevitably brought the chaos of the French Revolution). Karl Popper leaves sciences as a piecemeal engineering tool which cannot ask about ultimate ends, without any ultimate positive end or some grander truth to be found at, in turn, the end, such as man’s destiny, the immortal soul, or God. Logically speaking, Karl Popper does not want to deconstruct science, but practically speaking, he leaves no other option but to choose which form of deconstruction should be taken, Paul Feyerabend, Herbert Marcuse or… Wokstery.
Conclusion
What was the end of this essay? To study the life of an idea. While ideas live or die by their truth or falsehood, sociology, an historical science, can study what they produce, that is, which kind of action they direct, their consequences, avoiding direct treatment of their truth. The life of Karl Popper’s philosophy, that is, of the Open Society and Critical Rationalism, is Negativism. Negativism is what results from Karl Popper’s critical philosophy, and negativism is the result, negativism explains why Karl Popper can be used both by George Soros and the centre-right/left, and it explains why Karl Popper was succeeded by Thomas Kuhn and Paul Feyerabend; together with his antiessentialist tendency, commented by John Arcto, his Negativism gives the fuller answer so as to why from such liberal premises the philosophy of Karl Popper can at least coexist without worry with such different groups as identity politics, third/fourth wave feminism, Friedrich Hayek or Wokstery simpliciter.
There is a move in politics, or rather, a space of politics called the dissident right, that is, the right wing beyond the new and institutional right, the one who’s story has not been told in the realm of government, for it has been among the outcasts of politics generally and the right in particular. A fight on the dissident right truly happening only on the internet, the importance of which is difficult to determine being the internet an unstable measure of relevance; how important this discussion might be is imprudent to predict. What can be said is that a word thrown around in this space is vitalism. A word with great rhetorical strength, and also a concept rich in definitions. For the time being, the presence of this word in discussion is sign of a message to be conveyed, the many definitions recorded by history and, more importantly, the vagueness of use this word has is proof that such a message is still waiting its envoy. Vitalism is therefore something that can be said to be in high demand, but short in supply. Therefore, it is best to let the vitalist of the dissident right or any other corner and whoever they may be beyond the sphere of politics, mature.
One thing, however, is certain. Vitalism8 is a word of affirmation, at bare minimum, a vitalist claims that life exists and he asserts that life is precious. Marxists could claim that life is and is worth pursuing, so could liberals. Christianity, though often claimed by some vitalist to not be vital, has often been taken as a life affirming religion, and many Christians say, with the same integrity as unbelievers, to be vitalists. Materialists, spiritualists, libertarians, socialists or conservatives can all claim to be vitalist because truly, who can say that he is against life? Another thing is certain, increasingly more and more voices consider that Wokstery and Vitalism are at odds, they believe, in vitalist lingo, that third wave feminism has ended up as a cargo cult of death. John Arcto, not alone, considers himself a vitalist and takes Wokstery to be a life denying belief.
History is the life of ideas, so far does Sych go. Only one thing, can be told to these dissident right vitalists, that whatever Vitalism may be, Negativism, to make the denial of a different principle a uniting and binding principle, cannot be vitalistic. The intellectual life of the dissident right shows to be varied and constantly enriched by inspirations and renewing creativity, it is, for the time being, a living movement, even if chaotic. The dissident right can be enriched by all kinds of truths, but Negativism can only stop its life; it was for this reason that Yours Truly decided to write this, simply put, to answer John Arcto that his defence might be true, but put in practice Karl Popper will be fatal.
History is the life of ideas, John Arcto and a large reaction moving from the right wants to stop Wokstery, they search, like all political movements, for philosophers who give a rational critic and ideals; Karl Popper might bring a solid critic to the table. This is a chimera: the task is not criticism but action, as John Arcto seems to imply, if philosophers of action are needed, Karl Popper will not be a profitable philosopher, because he will not offer a vision for those that take part in any cultural war. Instead he will bring but one fatal gradual collapse: doubts, at the opening, and emptiness as the ends draws near.
So much more could be said about the concept of “style” used here. What more can be said is that is was a much beloved word by German historians of the XIX and also by historicists themselves, who would prefer talk of economic styles instead of the economy as an intelligible and autonomous field outside the scope of historical enquiry. All that said, what is most important is that, of course, style is an “ideal type” as was explained previously, therefore both abstract and objective.
while not from Popper, it is an apt summation of him, and, if universitarian mammals disagree, here we are interested rather with Anglofuturist Popper than with academic paper nm. gazillion about some philosopher
Max Weber’s phrase.
Some would say that there are other paradigms such as deontology or utilitarianism. Here, “common good” is meant in a wider sense than strictly Aristotelian philosophy. That said, all political philosophy has to answe the question of what politics is and what is justice, therefore, also has to treat what good is, even if just to deny it.
This point, which seems like a nauseating word salad, is highly important in this day and age. The political right, since approximately 2015 has been flooded with those discontented with the left. Many on the right are not strictly speaking right wingers, but antileftists. A sad fact of modern politics, one that explains all the bigotry, is that hatred does not come from love, but rather, love comes from hatred. When hatred is guided by reason, and reason knows what is good, then a father will hate anyone who hurts his children because he loves his children more than anything else; but, when hatred blinds reason, he who feels resent will be in favour, will support, will search, will “love” any person, idea or state that will hurt the person he feels resentment towards. The father might even sacrifice his son, and send him to war. A resentful father, a resentful person, will say fiat iustitiam, et pereat mundus; in other words, he will allow goodness to die, so that he might get revenge. Many on the identarian left, behind all there talk about minorities, have more hate for majorities than they have love for minorities. This has always been the temptation of left wing movements, to be certain, there are many noble revolutionaries with sincere love for the proletariat, and generally for all underdogs, but it turns out that there are also a fair share of not very proletarian Marxist thinkers whose philosophy and action is best explained as hatred of themselves, their parents and bourgeois culture, and their defence of the downtrodden workers is seen to be pure hatred of the Caucasian, Christian, European middle class. Hate and love always go together, true hatred comes from true love… But envy, sadness, malice and avarice can also be found in the heart of man.
This point is a common one, the best treatment of it can be found in Murray Rothbard’s The Betrayal of the American Right.
Someone like Jurgen Habermas, who is not a Marxist of strict observance, would simply argue about the communicative presuppositions of science that are both more fundamental and ethically oriented as opposed to questions of method. Popperian philosophy can hardly respond to political and social philosophies which include a arguable, but also rational, account of science’s role in history, society and human life.
Vitalism, in a most general sense: The doctrine that the origin and phenomenon of life are due to or produced by a vital principle, as distinct from a purely chemical or physical force. Henri Bergson and good ol’ Nietzsche are considered vitalists. For a more modern expression of vitalism, the pro-life movement smartly choose, at least rhetorically, vitalism as a war chant.
Philosophical paranoia is the vibe across western civilization. It certainly is the vibe within the institution of philosophy in the universities.
Relativism, causing this paranoia, is something I liken to a Basilisk in that it paralyzes all those that look upon it like Popper. You do a good job of articulating how and why Popper nurtures this relativistic sentiment, even if Popper intended no such thing, and overall I agree that "defense" is not the current required game to be played. Not by anyone on the dissident right or adjacent to it anyways.
I admit that I don't know or at least remember Artco's original defense of Popper, but if there is any defense possible of Popper it is that yes indeed any society must defend itself against subversive agents and ideas, but then the only relevant question is: Which society is justified to build?
It's this question that you push the reader to ask by disvaluing the relativist stance of Popper, and this is the only important question to ask. Vitalists too must ask this question.
In a far less philosophically rigorous and articulate manner, I too criticized Popper though only to debunk the entire notion of a uniquely tolerant "open society". I haven't really connected Popper to the relativistic rot of the west but upon you pointing it out I thoroughly agree with the portrayal.
Beautiful piece! There is a big gap in the literature concerning Popper, not many are aware of the power his work has though, and the fact that it is overlooked is frightening.