Peter Monnerjahn

Most commented posts

  1. Induction, philosophy’s toughest zombie — 3 comments
  2. Pinker on Intelligence — 2 comments
  3. Getting nearer to the truth — 2 comments
  4. Why we need to disagree more — 2 comments
  5. The power of logic — 2 comments

Author's posts

Praise is of no intellectual value

We should be thankful for every serious attempt to criticize our positions. Praise is of no intellectual value. Victories in debates are of no intellectual value. Yet if we can succeed even in getting a little clearer about our problems, we should be very happy with that intellectual achievement. [205]

Every policy is a solution to a problem

Every reputable political or social policy is a proposed solution to a problem; and we always need to be clear about the problem before we can propose the solution. We must always be able to ask of a policy: “To what problem is this the solution?” If there is no problem to which a given policy is a solution then the policy is superfluous, and therefore harm­ful, if only because it consumes resources to no purpose. … The whole notion that you can start with policies is deeply erroneous, and very damaging in practice. [151]

The utmost importance of characterising problems

First of all, we are required to formulate our problems with care. That means, among other things, not taking for granted what they are. We have to ask ourselves what precisely are, say, the main problems that face us in the field of primary education? What, precisely, are the main problems that face us with the treatment of teenage offenders against the law? What, precisely, are the main problems that face us in our relations with the United States? And so on and so forth.

There will, legitimately, be differences of opinion about what the problems are, before one has even begun to think in terms of solutions, and these differences should be thoroughly debated. It is of the utmost importance to get diagnosis right before one proceeds to cure, otherwise the proposed cure will be the wrong one, not effective, quite possibly harmful. So a lot of time and trouble and thought and work needs to go into the identification and formulation of prob­lems before one attempts to move forward from that position. …

[P]roposed solutions need to be critically examined and debated, with the explicit object of bringing their faults to light before they are turned into reality. [149]

Criticism as respect

The Open Society – and by this I mean both the society and the book – is opposed not just to this or that authority, and not just to Plato, Hegel, and Marx. It is opposed to the very idea that there can be anything like cognitive authorities whom we can rely upon or the truth.

So if we are going to understand open society as scientific or rational society, then we must also understand science and rationality in Popper’s terms. We must think of science not as an institutionalized hierarchy of experts, but as a never-ending process of problem-solving in which we propose tentative solutions to our problems and then try to elim­inate the errors in our proposals. We must think of rationality not in terms of justification, but in terms of criticism. And we must think of criticism not as an offense, or as a show of contempt or disdain, but as one of the greatest signs of respetct that one mind can show to another. [47]

The Open Society’s radical consequences

I am a democratic socialist and I believe that the young Popper worked out, as no one else has ever done, what the philosophical foundations of democratic socialism should be. And like him I would like to see these ideas replace the garbled mixture of Marxism and liberal-minded opportunism which passes for politcal theory on the demoracric left: in 1962 I published a book advocating this in the context of British Labour Party politics called The New Radicalism. In short, while making it clear that Popper is no longer a socialist, I want to claim his ideas for the democratic socialism in which he was so deeply enmeshed when he began to produce them, and in response to whose needs they were produced. This is where I believe their real significance is, and where their future lies. My longest-running argument with the older Popper is about what in my contention is his failure to accept, in matters of practical politics, the radical consequences of his own ideas.

The guiding principle for public policy put forward in The Open Society is: ‘Minimize avoidable suffering’. Character­istically, this has the immediate effect of drawing attention to problems. [84]

The idealism of piecemeal engineering

Utopian rationalism is a self-defeating rationalism. However benevolent its ends, it does not bring happiness, but only the familiar misery of being condemned to live under a tyrannical government.

It is important to understand this criticism fully. I do not criticize political ideals as such, nor do I assert that a political ideal can never be realized. This would not be a valid criticism. Many ideals have been realized which were once dogmatically declared to be unrealizable, for example, the establishment of workable and untyrannical institutions for securing civil peace, that is, for the suppression of crime within the state. Again, I see no reason why an international judicature and an international police force should be less successful in suppressing international crime, that is, na­tional aggression and the ill-treatment of minorities or perhaps majorities. I do not object to the attempt to realize such ideals.

Wherein, then, lies the difference between those benevolent Utopian plans to which I object because they lead to vio­lence, and those other important and far-reaching political reforms which I am inclined to recommend?

If I were to give a simple formula or recipe for distinguishing between what I consider to be admissible plans for social reform and inadmissible Utopian blueprints, I might say:

Work for the elimination of concrete evils rather than for the realization of abstract goods. Do not aim at establishing happiness by political means. Rather aim at the elimination of concrete miseries. Or, in more practical terms: fight for the elimination of poverty by direct means—for example, by making sure that everybody has a minimum income. Or fight against epidemics and disease by erecting hospitals and schools of medicine. Fight illiteracy as you fight criminality. But do all this by direct means. Choose what you consider the most urgent evil of the society in which you live, and try patiently to convince people that we can get rid of it.

But do not try to realize these aims indirectly by designing and working for a distant ideal of a society which is wholly good. However deeply you may feel indebted to its inspiring vision, do not think that you are obliged to work for its reali­zation, or that it is your mission to open the eyes of others to its beauty. Do not allow your dreams of a beautiful world to lure you away from the claims of men who suffer here and now. Our fellow men have a claim to our help; no generation must be sacrificed for the sake of future generations, for the sake of an ideal of happiness that may never be realized. In brief, it is my thesis that human misery is the most urgent problem of a rational public policy and that happiness is not such a problem. The attainment of happiness should be left to our private endeavours. [484-5]

Falsifying bundles of political goods

[Democracy] has the role of enabling us to change our political regime by means of elections, rather than by violence. Tis seems to me of the greatest importance; but it is also miportant that we see how limited it is in its consequences. Some control will be exercised over politicians by such means, assuming that the wish to continue in office. But it is a very blunt weapon, considering the way in which we can exercise preferences only for bundles of political goods. Fur­ther, it is also ripe for manipulation – by politicians who find ways to bribe us with money taken from our own pockets, and by their advertising agents, who, as in the United States, have found was to present political issues on television through the use of images in ways which make rational discussion almost impossible. [121]

Education for a new liberty

Aber es bleibt wahr, daß die Art und Weise, in der entwickelte Gesellschaften die geschaftliche Arbeitsteilung organi­siert haben, eine Reihe von Fragen offen läßt, die eine auf Melioration bedachte Gesellschaft beantworten muß, wenn sie sich ihres Namens würdig erweisen will: Wie ist es möglich, Menschen auf die übrigen Tätigkeiten ihrens Lebens in einer Umgebung vorzubereiten, die absichtlich von diesen Tätigkeiten abgesondert ist? Welche Chancen gibt es für diejenigen, die nach einer Zeit der Berufstätigkeit erneut etwas lernen wollen, neue Dinge oder mehr über die Gegen­stände ihrer ursprünglichen Ausbildung? Welchen vernünftigen Sinn kann es haben, einerseits die Arbeit der Men­schen übermäßig zu determinieren und anderersiets ihre Freizeit bewußt undeterminiert zu lassen? … Welchen Sinn hat es, Menschen, die viele Erfahrungen gesammelt haben, gesund sind und arbeiten wollen, in Pension zu schicken? Diese Fragen sind nicht neu; auch läßt sich auf alle durchaus eine Antwort geben. Aber ich meine, daß wir, wenn wir unser Leben bessern wollen, begreifen müssen, daß Bildung mehr ist als die Vorbereitung auf künftige Pflichten, Arbeit mehr als eine unangenehme Last, derer man sich so schnell wie möglich entledigen muß, und Freizeit mehr als eine residuale Zeit, um den Garten zu pflegen, an den Motorrädern der Freunde zu basteln, Fußball zu spielen, Musik zu hören, aber auch sich zu langweilen, sich zu betrinken, das eigene Leben zu zerstören und das von anderen. Die Re­konstruktion des sozialen Lebens der Menschen muß die Versteinerungen einer verfehlten Arbeitsteilung überwinden. Sie zielt darauf ab, die Einheit des menschlichen Lebens wiederherzustellen, oder vielleicht zum ersten Mal überhaupt herzustellen, so daß soziale Lebenschancen einen kontinuierlichen Prozeß menschlicher Tätigkeit versprechen, der in vielfältigen Dimensionen und Weisen seinen Ausdruck findet. Der erste Schritt auf diesem Wege liegt in der Schleifung der Wälle zwischen Bildung, Arbeit und Freizeit. …

Die zentrale Aufgabe der Bildung liegt indes nicht darin, Ersatzteile für den Wirtschaftsprozeß zu produzieren, sondern menschliche Fähigkeiten zu entfalten, indem sie für vielfältige Wahlmöglichkeiten geöffnet und nicht auf angebliche Anforderungen hin getrimmt werden. Darum sollte die Erziehung junger Menschen weit und nicht eng, allgemein und nicht spezialisiert und vor allem nicht zu lang sein. [93-4]

A source of possible criticism

Rationality, for Popper, is to be identified with openness to criticism; and each individual is to be valued a s a source of possible criticism. Objectivity, rather than being regarded as the attribute of the particular, wise individual is regarded as a social product – a product of critical discussion. [111]

The problem of unintended consequences

Eine praktisch verwertbare sozialtechnologische Analyse muß die Beschaffenheit der Ausgangssituation für politisches Handeln, zum Beispiel für die ins Auge gefaßte Gesetzgebung berücksichtigen. Und sie muß dabei auch der Tatsache Rechnung tragen, daß eine solche Gesetzgebung nur bestimmte – meist sehr eng umschriebene – Bestandteile der in­stitutionellen Konstellation in einer Weise ändern kann, die voraussehbare Auswirkungen in der erwünschten Richtung hat. [27]