Document Type : Research Paper
Author
Professor at the Institute of Philosophy, University of Wroclaw, Poland
Abstract
In this paper, I address the issue of the possible applicability of the ideas of Karl R. Popper’s social and political philosophy in the contemporary political life of postcolonial countries. Through reference to the reception of Popper’s philosophy in Central and Eastern Europe, I argue that Popper’s writings were effective in catalysing the political wholesale transformation by undermining Marxists’ pretensions to scientific status rather than through his anti-utopian and anti-revolutionary political recommendations. In the context of attempts to apply Popper’s ideas in postcolonial countries, especially Sub-Saharan Africa, I claim that the influence of Popper’s social thought on the politics of those countries may not be as effective as expected or desired.
Keywords
Acton H. B. & Watkins, J. W. N. (1963). Symposium: Negative Utilitarianism, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volumes, Vol. 37, pp. 83-114.
Afisi, O. T. (2016). Popper, Liberal-Communitarianism, Beyond the Politics of Liberalism, Philosophia: E-Journal of Philosophy and Culture. Vol. 11,
Afisi, O. T. (2016). Towards Exploring an Enduring Liberal-Communitarianism in Karl Popper Through His Intellectual Biography. Journal of Philosophy, Culture and Religion, Vol. 24.
Afisi, O. T. (2020). Re-echoing the Conservatism in Karl Popper’s Piecemeal Engineering. Studia Philosophica Wratislaviensia, XV (1), 9-18.
Afisi, O. T. (Ed.) (2022). Karl Popper and Africa. Knowledge, Politics and Development. Springer.
Alexandravicius, P. (2019). Strategies of Perception of Europe and Their Reception in Lithuania. Studia Philosophica Wratislaviensia, XIV (1).
Bessner, D. (2018). The George Soros philosophy – and its fatal flaw. The Guardian, July 6, at: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/jul/06/the-george-soros-philosophy-and-its-fatal-flaw.
Chmielewski, A. (1999). The Future is Open: A Conversation with Sir Karl Popper. Open Society after Fifty Years, Ian Jarvie & Sandra Pralong, Routledge.
Chmielewski, A. (2020). Politics and Recognition. Towards a New Political Aesthetics. Routledge.
Derksen, A. A. (1985). The Alleged Unity of Popper's Philosophy of Science: Falsifiability as Fake Cement. Philosophical Studies: An International Journal for Philosophy in the Analytic Tradition, 48(3), 313-336.
Desai, G. (2001). Subject to Colonialism. African Self-Fashioning and the Colonial Library, Duke University Press.
Drałus, D. (2020). The Reciprocal Cosmopolitanism, Problemos, No 97, pp. 8-23.
Fanon, F. (1963). Wretched of the Earth, translated from the French by Richard Philcox with commentary by Jean-Paul Sartre & Homi K. Grove Press.
Fanon, F. (1986). Black Skin, White Masks, Transl. Charles Lam Markmann. Pluto Press.
Gellner, E. (1983). Nations and Nationalism. Blackwell.
Gellner, E. (1997). Nationalism. Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
Hacohen, M. H. (2000). Karl Popper. The Formative Years 1902-1945. Politics and Philosophy in the Interwar Vienna, Cambridge University Press.
Hobbes, T. (1996 [1651]). Leviathan. or The Matter, Form, and Power of a Commonwealth Ecclesiastical and Civil. Edited with an introduction by John C. A. Gaskin. Oxford University Press.
Hoppe, E. A. & Nicholls T. (Eds.) (2010). Fanon and the decolonization of philosophy. Lexington Books.
Husserl, E. (1970). The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, Northwestern University Press.
Kenaw, S. (2010). Psychoanalyzing Historicists? The Enigmatic Popper. Journal for General Philosophy of Science/Zeitschrift für allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie, 41(2), 315-332.
Kołakowski, L. (1990). The Self-Poisoning of the Open Society, in: Modernity on Endless Trial, The University of Chicago Press.
Losurdo, D. (2014). Liberalism: A Counter-History. Translated by G. Elliott. Verso.
Masolo, D. A. (1994). African philosophy in search of identity. Edinburgh University Press.
Mbembe, A. (2001). On the Postcolony. University of California Press.
Metz, T. (2011). Two Conceptions of African Ethics. In Quest: An African Journal of Philosophy, XXV (1-2), 141-161.
Metz, T. (2020). Popper’s Politics and Law in the Light of African Values, Jus Cogens, 2, Springer.
Mignolo, W. D. (2011). The Darker Side of Western Modernity. Global Futures, Decolonial Options, Duke University Press.
Miller, D. (1997). Sir Karl Raimund Popper, Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society, The Royal Society, Vol. 43, 369-409.
Mudimbe, V. Y. (1988). The Invention of Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy, and the Order of Knowledge, Indiana University Press.
Ogbonna, B. C. (2012). Structural Adjustment Program (SAP) in Nigeria: An Empirical Assessment. In Proceedings from the 2nd Accounting and Finance Research Association International Conference November 4-7, Enugu, Nigeria.
Popper, K. (1986). The Poverty of Historicism, Ark-Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Popper, K. (1989). Conjectures and Refutations. The Growth of Scientific Knowledge, Routledge,
Popper, K. (1992). Unended Quest. An Intellectual Autobiography. Routledge.
Popper, K. (1999). All Life is Problem Solving, transl. by Patrick Camiller. Routledge.
Popper, K. (2013). Open Society and its Enemies, New One-Volume Edition. N. J. Princeton University Press.
Sartre, J. P. (1963). Preface. Frantz Fanon, Wretched of the Earth, translated from the French by Richard Philcox with commentary by Jean-Paul Sartre and Homi K. Bhabha, Grove Press.
Sassower, R. (2006). Popper’s Legacy. Rethinking Politics, Economics and Science. Routledge.
Sassower, R. (2017). The quest for prosperity. Reframing political economy. Rowman & Littlefield International.
Satia, P. (2008). Spies in Arabia. The Great War and the cultural foundations of Britain’s covert empire in the Middle East. Oxford University Press.
Sen, A. (2006). Equality of What? In Inequality Reexamined, Oxford University Press.
Soros, G. (1995). Soros on Soros: Staying Ahead of the Curve. John Wiley and Sons.
Soros, G. (2010). Lectures at Central European University. Public Affairs.
Sousa, S. B. (2006). The Rise of the Global Left. Zed Books.
Táíwò Ó. (2004). Post-Independence African Political Philosophy. In A Companion to African Philosophy, edited by Kwasi W., William E., Abraham, A. I. & Ifeanyi A. M., Blackwell, 304-312.
Tarski, A. (1956). Logic, Semantics, and Metamathematics, translated by J. H. Woodger, Oxford University Press.
Watkins, J. W. N. (1974). The Unity of Popper’s Thought. In Schilpp, P.A. (Ed.), The Philosophy of Karl Popper, Open Court.
Watkins, J. W. N. (1997). Karl Popper. Memoir, The American Scholar, Spring, pp. 205-219.
Woleński, J. (1985). Filozoficzna szkoła lwowsko-warszawska, Warszawa.
Woleński, J. (2019). Lvov-Warsaw School. In Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/lvov-warsaw/.
)
Send comment about this article