Speaker 1: Hello everyone, Welcome back to continue and brought to you
Speaker 1: by Europe Media. I'm Keith Woods. I'm here at my
Speaker 1: steam course Ryan. Today we're going to be discussing Carol
Speaker 1: Popper and the Upper Society ran This was your idea
Speaker 1: to cover this as a topic. What was it that
Speaker 1: put you on to Carol Popper as a thinker worked
Speaker 1: talking about Well, it was Keith Woods. Really, Carl Proper,
Speaker 1: I didn't know you really said that. No, no, To be.
Speaker 2: Fair to you, you sort of said that Popper was
Speaker 2: not spoken about nearly enough within the scene. You know,
Speaker 2: a lot of people were describing the processes since you know,
Speaker 2: the interwar period and post World War two as cultural Marxism,
Speaker 2: very vague things like that that really missed the detail
Speaker 2: of how modern democracy is defined and been enshrined legally.
Speaker 2: And you did a couple of excellent threads on on
Speaker 2: Twitter sort of detailing Popper's influence. So yeah, I've I
Speaker 2: since read The Open Society and Its Enemies. Obviously, I
Speaker 2: was very aware of George Solas's Open Society Foundation and
Speaker 2: the kind of activism slash destruction they have brought on
Speaker 2: various Western countries. So I was intrigued to read it,
Speaker 2: and I think it's definitely worth discussing in depth.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I have. I don't know if I can take
Speaker 1: credit for it, but I have noticed some people on
Speaker 1: our side talking more about the idea of the open
Speaker 1: society and liberal pluralism and kind of trying to get
Speaker 1: to the roots of the postwar consensus rather than Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think a few years ago it was very like,
Speaker 1: you know, this theory of Marxist subversion. It was all
Speaker 1: Gramsky and intellectuals that snuck into the institutions, and sometimes
Speaker 1: there was a reluctance, i think, especially from people coming
Speaker 1: from a conservative background, to look at the deeper foundations
Speaker 1: within liberal thought thinkers that are considered more moderate or
Speaker 1: part of the liberal tradition. But then when you look
Speaker 1: at them, you know, you do find that there's this
Speaker 1: extremely strong current that isn't just confined to the left
Speaker 1: after the post war, that is essentially built on this
Speaker 1: foundation of never again. Right, That's that's what Paper rebuilt
Speaker 1: his own his own theory on. But yeah, it's the
Speaker 1: shock of the Second World War, the shock of you know,
Speaker 1: the the idea of of racial science and totalitarianism and genocide.
Speaker 1: On this mass scale. And we discussed this a little
Speaker 1: bit in the in the Wokeness episode, But there we
Speaker 1: were talking about strains of new left thodd Popper doesn't
Speaker 1: really fall into that, you know, and some people sometimes
Speaker 1: he's cited as kind of a conservative or libertarian thinker.
Speaker 1: Libertarians are quite friendly to his thought. But yes, you
Speaker 1: do find a lot of the problems we encounter now
Speaker 1: when it comes to trying to kind of wrestle back
Speaker 1: control of our own societies. You find that the whole
Speaker 1: structure of modern liberal democracy is very tied up with
Speaker 1: Poperian ideas. So I think it's worth studying. But yeah,
Speaker 1: a lot of his foundational ideas have really become omnipresent,
Speaker 1: just in the way people talk about things like liberalism, democracy, populism, totalitarianism,
Speaker 1: just in the vocabulary of liberalism and what these terms mean. Now,
Speaker 1: a lot of it can be traced back to Popper's thought.
Speaker 1: But let's get into it. I think you can't have
Speaker 1: this discussion about Popper without stay Marden with his biography,
Speaker 1: because I think his life story is central to this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he was born in Vienna at the start of
Speaker 2: the twentieth century. He was twelve years old when a
Speaker 2: little Serbian boy called Govrilla prince Hip shot the Archduke
Speaker 2: of Austro Hungary. Obviously, the you know, the First World
Speaker 2: War ensued, one of the bloodiest wars that had ever
Speaker 2: been until that time. So at twelve years old, he
Speaker 2: was you know, thrown in the deep end of experiencing
Speaker 2: a brutal tribal warfare. Vienna is a very strange place.
Speaker 2: I went there last year and you can just feel
Speaker 2: the Empire lives on to this day. It's incredibly aristocratic,
Speaker 2: very grand architecture everywhere, but you feel the multi ethnic
Speaker 2: character very much, and I mean you hear Serbian, Hungarian,
Speaker 2: Slovak and all the other new groups that are there now.
Speaker 1: But it's you know, eventually we'll bring us back around
Speaker 1: to Sous. But you know the European University that was
Speaker 1: started by Sorous's Open Society foundation, it had moved to
Speaker 1: Budapest and Hungary and because of the urban government it
Speaker 1: was basically forest owed and it is in Vienna now,
Speaker 1: which is kind of fit in.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it has a reputation as an intellectual center. Also,
Speaker 2: you know, other intellectuals at the time that were pretty
Speaker 2: forward thinking from there were Freud and Witgenstein. So you know,
Speaker 2: modern multi ethnic empire, intellectual thought going on in that
Speaker 2: area gets hit by war, and then, you know, as
Speaker 2: as Popper's growing up, same thing starts happening when n
Speaker 2: s Germany starts rising and he flees to New Zealand
Speaker 2: in the late thirties and he publishes The Open Society
Speaker 2: and Its Enemies in nineteen forty five, so his intellectual
Speaker 2: defense of liberalism and never Again is published just in
Speaker 2: time for new constitutions to be drawn, and you know,
Speaker 2: hence its influenced this day.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna I'm gonna call you on the Vitgenstein pronunciation.
Speaker 1: So it reminds me when I did a podcast with
Speaker 1: a guy called Chrispond before in the entire two hours
Speaker 1: kept send desks. Its driven me crazy.
Speaker 2: And hoped Chris Bond is a legend though I did
Speaker 2: like him.
Speaker 1: But because we're friendly enough, I'm just gonna, I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna call you there.
Speaker 2: He was smiling for the whole time while I was speaking.
Speaker 1: Just bring him back some memories. But yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: what's significant about that, though, is the Jewish element. There's
Speaker 1: a biographer of Karl Popper called Malachi Hack Cohen, who
Speaker 1: is himself an Israeli ju I think, I think he's
Speaker 1: a Zionist. So these he has this interesting perspective on
Speaker 1: Jewish intelligency in the twentieth century. But he wrote this
Speaker 1: long biography of Popper and then he has a number
Speaker 1: of papers on the intellectual influences on him. But one
Speaker 1: thing he really emphasizes is that you can't understand the
Speaker 1: work of Popper without understanding it coming from someone who
Speaker 1: is living the life of cosmopolitan, urbanite jew who had
Speaker 1: his social reality really transformed and you know, the foundation
Speaker 1: has just pulled out from under him, and that he
Speaker 1: came from a milieu of Jewish intellectuals and just a
Speaker 1: Jewish community in Austria that, as you said, grew up
Speaker 1: in a multi ethnic, cosmopolitan Habsburg Empire. Nationalism was this
Speaker 1: dangerous foreign thing, but usually had their place in that society, right.
Speaker 1: They were kind of culture bearers. There were culture leaders.
Speaker 1: Vienna was this cosmopolitan place where they could engage in
Speaker 1: intellectual activity and so Ha Cohen says that the idea
Speaker 1: of the open society is really the universalization of the cosmopolitan,
Speaker 1: internationalist Jews ideal way of being in terms of creating
Speaker 1: a universal legalism that protects them and basically trying to
Speaker 1: recreate the conditions of the liberal Habsburg empire prior to
Speaker 1: the rise of nationalism and authoritarianism and fascism and everything
Speaker 1: that came with it. And I mean Popper is interesting
Speaker 1: in that regard, in that you know, pretty much every
Speaker 1: liberal intellectual after the Second World War and kind of
Speaker 1: as part of the post war consensus. I mean, this
Speaker 1: was like the post World War One consensus. You could
Speaker 1: say it was like national self determination. Popper is one
Speaker 1: intellectual that actually rejects that and just never accepted any
Speaker 1: degree of nationalism. Some liberal theorists will have a respect
Speaker 1: or idealize small nation states, smaller nationalisms. You don't even
Speaker 1: get that with Popper. He was contemptuous of all of it.
Speaker 1: And yeah, I mean the story really starts with him
Speaker 1: living within this cosmopolitan Jewish community in a multi ethnic empire,
Speaker 1: and suddenly the foundations of that are wiped out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and George Soros the same he was in Hungary,
Speaker 2: he suffered a similar kind of fate. He managed to
Speaker 2: survive the war and then became a student of Popper
Speaker 2: in at the London School of Economics. So what an
Speaker 2: impact they've had on the world since their you know,
Speaker 2: respective experiences not far from each other in Central Europe.
Speaker 1: There are so many stories like that that's remarkable. I mean,
Speaker 1: i I've out in mind at times to write a
Speaker 1: book on this. I mean, you could, if you could
Speaker 1: just go through all of the emigres and the intellectual
Speaker 1: impact they had and the common direction it went in.
Speaker 1: Ernest Gllner is another one. Ernest Gelner is one of
Speaker 1: the most influential sociologists of the twentieth century, some people
Speaker 1: might say the most, and his theory of nationalism, his
Speaker 1: modernist theory of nationalism, was the dominant and probably still
Speaker 1: is the dominant theory of nationalism in sociology. You know,
Speaker 1: this idea that's a modern construction, creation of the Industrial
Speaker 1: Revolution and so on. And he's a very similar story.
Speaker 1: You know, he grew up in a Jewish family in
Speaker 1: Prague again at the time, which was a very cosmopolitan,
Speaker 1: more multicultural city, and again they fled because of you know,
Speaker 1: tensions with Germany, and eventually, of course not to Germany
Speaker 1: invaded Czechoslovakia. But just again a very similar story of
Speaker 1: these emigres that grow up in a more cosmopolitan Europe
Speaker 1: of multi ethnic empires, see the rise of nationalism and fascism,
Speaker 1: and have this impetus behind their work from that point
Speaker 1: on where they go into sociology or philosophy or political
Speaker 1: theory and have this strong desire to deconstruct the impulses
Speaker 1: that led to those forces.
Speaker 2: That's quite a good segue because the first philosopher that
Speaker 2: Poper addresses in his work is Plato. So some brief
Speaker 2: background on Plato. He was an Athenian and he grew
Speaker 2: up during the Peloponnesian War between Sparta and Athens. Sparta
Speaker 2: eventually won that war. They put in a puppet government
Speaker 2: which was ruled by what's called the Thirty Tyrants, of
Speaker 2: which more than a couple of members were linked to
Speaker 2: Plato because he had quite an aristocratic background. And Popper
Speaker 2: for pages and pages, it was several hours I was
Speaker 2: listening to the audio book. He just tries to destroy
Speaker 2: and defame Plato, who's become a hero of mine, and
Speaker 2: in the last few years, it really is just a
Speaker 2: total defamation. He basically mates out that Plato's work is
Speaker 2: covering for his tyrannical you know, family members, that is
Speaker 2: a complete authoritarian. He kind of draws on the theory
Speaker 2: of forms and the idea of philosopher Kings as you know,
Speaker 2: being total like totalitarian in nature. You know, he decries
Speaker 2: him as a Eugenesist, someone that would enforce a caste
Speaker 2: system with no mobility, and and many other attacks. And
Speaker 2: I when I was listening to it, I just thought
Speaker 2: it was so intellectually dishonest. And you know, having read
Speaker 2: this book recently, that clarifies certainly that it is a
Speaker 2: dishonest work. I don't know what you thought of it yourself,
Speaker 2: as as you were reading that first section on Plato.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is. It is a surprisingly polemical work. Whether
Speaker 1: he's attacking Plaid or letter Hegel. The one he goes
Speaker 1: a bit easier on is Maerks actually, but especially with
Speaker 1: Plato and Hegel, he's pretty he's pretty ruthless. And Harry
Speaker 1: writes and yeah, as you say, often unjustified. But you know,
Speaker 1: it's interesting to see that in constructing this liberal political project,
Speaker 1: he's not just taking aim and Plato for his politics.
Speaker 1: He's taken aim at the idea of theory of forms
Speaker 1: and of metaphysical realism and the idea of constructing metaphysics
Speaker 1: and having your politics be downstream from that. So he's
Speaker 1: challenging the very foundations of classical political philosophy, which were
Speaker 1: based in the idea of there being a good life,
Speaker 1: there being an end towards which states should aim if
Speaker 1: there are four people's good and that we can use
Speaker 1: reason to discover these collective goods and the purpose of
Speaker 1: the state. So Paper wants to reject all of that,
Speaker 1: you know, he wants to get to the ultimate foundations
Speaker 1: of totalitarian thought, which comes down to people have competing
Speaker 1: visions of the good life, and as long as that happens,
Speaker 1: someone can come and impose their vision on the masses.
Speaker 1: And so he wants to cut the foundations of that
Speaker 1: and say that this is off limits for human discourse.
Speaker 1: We're supposed to just focus on, you know, rational argumentation
Speaker 1: about empirical matters, not drift off into this kind of
Speaker 1: mystical discussion about realms of forms or you know, objective
Speaker 1: moral goods or any of these things. Of course, he
Speaker 1: falls into the same problem any relativists do when they're
Speaker 1: trying to do this, is he's obviously proposing his own
Speaker 1: moral scheme while you know, just not justifying it and
Speaker 1: saying we should take it as given, which is, you know,
Speaker 1: obviously ridiculous. And what is moral system comes down to
Speaker 1: at Rude is this kind of negative utilitarianism. He says
Speaker 1: again and again that the only the only moral guide
Speaker 1: is basically reduced and suffering. But yeah, I think it's
Speaker 1: it's notable that in trying to once and for all
Speaker 1: remove totalitarian good and establish liberalism, he has to launch
Speaker 1: really a full attack on metaphysics. You know, it shows
Speaker 1: the the negative tendency of liberalism as as kind of
Speaker 1: an anti ideology that if you remove meaning, if you
Speaker 1: remove search for transcendence or higher purpose, but then what
Speaker 1: you're left with is this kind of liberal proceduralism that
Speaker 1: people just accepted for utilitarian reasons.
Speaker 2: I think a trick he makes as well is he
Speaker 2: strongly endorses Socrates. I think he's forced into that position
Speaker 2: because you know, between Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, they you know,
Speaker 2: they are the titans of Western for they are the
Speaker 2: ones that developed reason. They are the foundation of you know,
Speaker 2: all of Western civilization. So he has to lean on something,
Speaker 2: and he he makes this play where he basically says
Speaker 2: that Socrates is actually the democrat, He's actually the father
Speaker 2: of the open society. He's debating down in the piaeas
Speaker 2: port with you know, the common man, while Plato's in
Speaker 2: the academy with his elite. But in reality, Socrates was
Speaker 2: the tutor of the main players of the tyrants, critias,
Speaker 2: comedies is It and Alcibiades, you know, and he was
Speaker 2: a soldier himself, you know, very anti democratic in his sport.
Speaker 1: And I think there's very good reason to think this
Speaker 1: is a whole other topic, but you know the story.
Speaker 1: So sometimes people that dislike playto on Socrates, like Nietzschean's
Speaker 1: we'll say, well, that was you know, putting Socrates to
Speaker 1: death was totally justified because he was this subversive liberal,
Speaker 1: pro democratic thinker. It actually seems now like he was
Speaker 1: most likely put to death if you look past you know,
Speaker 1: the spin maybe Plato puts in, he was most likely
Speaker 1: to put to death because of that connection to tyranny,
Speaker 1: the fact that one of the fact that his students
Speaker 1: had been involved in the tyranny of the dirty and
Speaker 1: that it was seen that he was esoterically teaching an
Speaker 1: anti democratic message, and that he was justifying that. You know,
Speaker 1: there was a after that ended. It was a very
Speaker 1: brutal tyrannical period, and there was kind of an amnesty
Speaker 1: where there was an agreement to kind of you know,
Speaker 1: forget about that and cease hostilities to stop Athens turning
Speaker 1: into complete civil war. But there was a constant distrust
Speaker 1: of Socrates from that point on, and I think, you know,
Speaker 1: I think his thought coming troop Plato is anti democratic.
Speaker 1: It was. I mean, there was obviously there was obviously
Speaker 1: a basis for that suspicion.
Speaker 2: It was all about the amnesty because yeah, they wanted
Speaker 2: to end the blood feud effectively, so they put on
Speaker 2: trial for corrupting the youth. I mean, it's not much
Speaker 2: different from modern day lawfare, is it. But yeah, I
Speaker 2: mean they had good reason to be anti democratic in
Speaker 2: my opinion. I mean Plato saw in his life growing
Speaker 2: up that I think he said that in ancient Athens,
Speaker 2: honor replaced wisdom, and money replaced honor, and it became
Speaker 2: a rule of the mob. Obviously, the Peloponnesian War was
Speaker 2: you know, expensive and chaotic. There were you know, constant
Speaker 2: there was a constant need to democratize power or whatever,
Speaker 2: and Plato saw many problems with But Popper completely neglects
Speaker 2: the latter part of Plato's life where he traveled to
Speaker 2: Syracuse as a philosopher to try and teach the tyrants
Speaker 2: of Syracuse how to become philosopher kings how to become
Speaker 2: moral men. And he actually offended Dionysius the first to
Speaker 2: the point where he was sold into slavery, so Plato
Speaker 2: himself became a slave. I think he said something like,
Speaker 2: I'm looking for a good man. And Dionysus was so
Speaker 2: offended by the fact that he wasn't already considered a
Speaker 2: philosopher king that he had had enough of Plato and
Speaker 2: got rid of him. And then Plato was invited back
Speaker 2: by his friend dion to try and teach the son
Speaker 2: of Dionysius to become a philosopher king a moral man.
Speaker 2: But again and the son was also a tyrant. So
Speaker 2: you know, Plato's whole life and everyone he was connected
Speaker 2: to were you know, these fighting men without reason, and
Speaker 2: his life's work was trying to develop a philosophy of
Speaker 2: the good. And you know, we, as you know, sons
Speaker 2: of Western Europe owe him an enormous step for what
Speaker 2: he did. And you know, Popper, as a cosmopolitan Jew,
Speaker 2: has destroyed him in an attempt to you know, create
Speaker 2: something new to benefit you know, his group or his
Speaker 2: own view of the world based on his experiences. So
Speaker 2: you know, that's my perception of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and getting into it, I mean, Plato becomes the
Speaker 1: ultimate embodiment of the thinker of the clause society. And
Speaker 1: this is the big binary that Popper establishes, is the
Speaker 1: open society and the closed society. And you know, explain it.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a very simplistic scheme, right, I mean, essentially,
Speaker 1: people are individualistic, we're atomistic individuals, we have reasoning capacities,
Speaker 1: we kind of naturally tend towards liberal, individualist societies, but
Speaker 1: we also have tribal impulses. Our worst impulses are tribal
Speaker 1: and collectivists. And true history, there are nefarious thinkers like Plato,
Speaker 1: Aristotle and then later on Hegel and other German thinkers
Speaker 1: who take advantage of this negative tribal nature and encourage
Speaker 1: the closed society. And the closed society is where one
Speaker 1: vision of the good is imposed on society, true totalitarian methods,
Speaker 1: where our individual rights are individual conscience or sacrificed for
Speaker 1: this idea of a greater good. And this is the
Speaker 1: source of the great evils of history. This is the
Speaker 1: cause of totalitarianism, and this is the cause of the
Speaker 1: terrible twentieth century totalitarianism that Popper is reacting against, and
Speaker 1: because of which there's such a large audience for Propper
Speaker 1: when he turns to political philosophy. Now, Popper's idea of
Speaker 1: the open society, again, it's taken as given individual rights,
Speaker 1: individual conscience, anatomized individual entering into liberal society. And what
Speaker 1: makes it different from you know, your standard liberal democracy
Speaker 1: up to that point is Popper really emphasizes institutions and
Speaker 1: emphasizes the pluralless nature of a proper democracy. So the
Speaker 1: open society, it's not just that you have, you know,
Speaker 1: elections every four or five years, but you have to
Speaker 1: create the values of the open society and people. People
Speaker 1: have to believe in openness, tolerance, pluralism. These are the
Speaker 1: foundational beliefs. And it also has to be institutionalized, right,
Speaker 1: you have to protect minority individual rights. Rights become more
Speaker 1: important than the collective will, which in later years politicians
Speaker 1: will use this a lot and equated with populism. And
Speaker 1: this is where really we get this idea that there's
Speaker 1: a conflict between populism and democracy. This is very much
Speaker 1: a poparian idea because you know, for him, you know,
Speaker 1: just the mass democratic will freed. Well, that can be
Speaker 1: taken advantage of by tyrants, bye detalitarians that direct that
Speaker 1: in the direction of the closed society. What really matters
Speaker 1: is pluralism. What really matters is preserving as liberals will
Speaker 1: say out, democratic values, and the democratic values are basically
Speaker 1: the values of the open society. It's the values of openness.
Speaker 1: And then, of course, this is where another famous idea
Speaker 1: from Proper, the paradox of tolerance comes in that to
Speaker 1: uphold a tolerant open society, you can't tolerate intolerant ideas.
Speaker 1: So anti democratic, anti pluralist ideas need to be stamped out.
Speaker 1: Parties that promote them can be banned, Individuals can be
Speaker 1: silenced that promote these ideas, and so you get this
Speaker 1: scheme that leads you towards institutionalized pluralism. That pluralism has
Speaker 1: to be enforced through the legal system, through civil society,
Speaker 1: the Open Society Foundation being the perfect example actually, and
Speaker 1: they fund media organizations and journalists across the world. It
Speaker 1: needs to be enforced through international bodies that can cooperate
Speaker 1: to ensure individual nation states aren't taking the way the
Speaker 1: rights away the rights of individuals. It needs to be
Speaker 1: enforced through human rights agreements and treaties. And again, the
Speaker 1: European Convention on Human Rights are very kind of poper
Speaker 1: document and something that the Open Society Foundation has pushed
Speaker 1: for heavily is to base national constitutions and national law
Speaker 1: on the European Convention and human rights. That's a very
Speaker 1: Poperian way of looking at law and stagecraft. And so
Speaker 1: this is the Poperian ideal. And this is why you
Speaker 1: say that Popper's ideas are really what have won out
Speaker 1: in the twentieth century. You know, there's kind of a
Speaker 1: there's a more leftist approach and a more right approach.
Speaker 1: And he was he was friendly with Hiek, and like
Speaker 1: I said, libertarians looked to him. He was more of
Speaker 1: a social democrat himself. But the foundational pluralism and understanding
Speaker 1: of democracy has really become taken for granted as outlined there,
Speaker 1: you know, by the fact that we see populism and
Speaker 1: democracy as two things that are maybe not just separate,
Speaker 1: but potentially even incompatible.
Speaker 2: Now, well, yeah, that's all coming to the forefront with
Speaker 2: the antagonism in Germany at the moment. You know, AfD
Speaker 2: are rising through the polls and now the German State
Speaker 2: is saying, well, actually, you're a threat to democracy. A
Speaker 2: lot of people don't understand what that means. A lot
Speaker 2: of people don't understand that the German constitution is actually
Speaker 2: based on Carl Popper. So we're in a situation now
Speaker 2: where majoritarian rule, the idea of national recovery is seen
Speaker 2: as beyond the pale by these European institutions, German State
Speaker 2: or the EU EHR. So you know that that debate
Speaker 2: is going to be had. You know, it's interesting times ahead,
Speaker 2: and I think this needs to be out in the open.
Speaker 2: You know, if Germany is to survive as a nation,
Speaker 2: they need to understand the foundation of the modern constitution.
Speaker 2: And yeah, I guess that brings us to the other
Speaker 2: great philosopher. The Popper attacks in the work is his
Speaker 2: attack on Hegel, who many people might not know, but
Speaker 2: Hagel is the philosophical origin of you know, later theories
Speaker 2: of of Marxism and fascism. So yeah, I guess we'll
Speaker 2: get into that now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and we're worth mentioning in that regard as well.
Speaker 1: I mean German legal theorists and political theorists that explicitly
Speaker 1: ciged Popper's paradox of tolerance to justify you know, constitutional
Speaker 1: bands on on parodies and these institutions in Germany, you know,
Speaker 1: the special like institutions to protect the constitution and so on,
Speaker 1: that have this incredible overarching power to ban parties and
Speaker 1: organizations to to enforce democracy, and that they were often
Speaker 1: citing Popper directly. Because it's funny because sometimes I've brought
Speaker 1: up Opper in the past and you see people say, oh,
Speaker 1: the paradox of tolerance is like misunderstood and he didn't
Speaker 1: really mint it the way people say he did. But
Speaker 1: it's like, well, that is that was the interpretation that
Speaker 1: was used by by German jurists to justify these really
Speaker 1: anti democratic actions the liberal state has taken there. But yeah,
Speaker 1: with with Hegel, I mean with Hegel, you really see
Speaker 1: this critique of historicism, which again is kind of a
Speaker 1: maybe the unique aspect to Popper's political thought where we
Speaker 1: discussed you know what Plato, He's opposed to an idea
Speaker 1: of a theory of forms or metaphysical realism or or
Speaker 1: ground in political theory and in great metaphysical ideals. He
Speaker 1: also opposes playedoff for his historicism and this idea that
Speaker 1: you know, nature and history was tending towards the ideal state,
Speaker 1: and of course you get that usually with Hegel. Hegel
Speaker 1: is often it's like equated with the historical method and
Speaker 1: you know, thesis as anti thesis synthesis. This is like
Speaker 1: the you know shorthand that people associate with Hegel. And yeah,
Speaker 1: he's he's he's blistering in his attacks on Hegel.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's attacks on historicism. You know, I lost count.
Speaker 2: He must have attacked historicism about thirty times. But yeah,
Speaker 2: in terms of you know, introduction to Hegel, you know,
Speaker 2: he has his dialectical methods, which is the thesis antithesis, synthesis.
Speaker 2: It's based in the idea that you know, every idea
Speaker 2: has an internal contradiction and then you resolve the contradiction
Speaker 2: and create the synthesis. And this manifest as what he
Speaker 2: calls an absolute spirit, which is basically the will of
Speaker 2: God unfolding through the nation state. It's obviously very statist idea,
Speaker 2: it's very German in character, but it's also very progressive.
Speaker 2: It has a very internal progressive logic, and you know
Speaker 2: many traditionalists critique it from that angle. But yeah, he
Speaker 2: again he attacks Hegel. Hegel's character as he attacks Plato.
Speaker 2: He leans very much into Schopenhauer's critiques. Keith is a big,
Speaker 2: big fan of Schopenhouer, so it made me smile when
Speaker 2: I was listening to the work. But you know, he
Speaker 2: accuses Hegel of being an asset of the Prussian monarchy, basically,
Speaker 2: you know, endorsing the militaristic, fascistic Prussian state. He accuses
Speaker 2: Hegel of being an obscurantist. You know, many people make
Speaker 2: that critique that his language is very difficult. So yeah,
Speaker 2: that's kind of how he starts his critique on Hegel.
Speaker 1: The philosophy sprogue are going to be all over this.
Speaker 1: If we don't point out that Hegel doesn't actually mention
Speaker 1: thesis and esus synthesis, they always jump on at it.
Speaker 1: It is technically true with the dialectic is in Hegel.
Speaker 1: And that's why Popper has such an issue as he
Speaker 1: sees any any strain of thought that sees that there's
Speaker 1: a purpose or progress history is necessarily dangerous to him
Speaker 1: because then you can use this big other you can
Speaker 1: use this metaphysical entity or this tell us to history
Speaker 1: to justify constraints on the individual. You know, we're doing
Speaker 1: this for the progress of history. We're doing this to
Speaker 1: establish utopia. We're doing this for the bring about the
Speaker 1: proletarian revolution in the classical States. So this is why
Speaker 1: he has a problem with all of these strains of thought,
Speaker 1: which again for his time, was an interesting way to
Speaker 1: attack totalitarianism, to find that there's these there's these meta
Speaker 1: ideas underneath. Now, of course, I think it becomes problematic
Speaker 1: because I think he engages in a lot of this himself.
Speaker 1: You know, even of course when he's attacking totalizing systems.
Speaker 1: I mean, you can't get outside creating some kind of
Speaker 1: meta system having some kind of objective moral ground, which
Speaker 1: he does when he establishes this negative utilitarian principle. But
Speaker 1: even with the historicism, you know, it's in his philosophy,
Speaker 1: we've progressed to liberal pluralist societies. There's clearly got of
Speaker 1: progress to history there. But I think his big issue
Speaker 1: is given this any kind of metaphysical content. But one
Speaker 1: of the things that surprised me actually, but his critique
Speaker 1: of Hegel is he blames hegel and associated German idealist thinkers,
Speaker 1: specifically Herder and Ficta. He blames them not only for
Speaker 1: inventing German nationalism, which is a charge you'll hear sometimes
Speaker 1: that Ficta basically invents German nationalism in the nineteenth century,
Speaker 1: but he actually blames him for inventing nationalism itself and
Speaker 1: again at its time. I mean, this is before the
Speaker 1: modernist theories of nationalism became really popular, where nationalism is
Speaker 1: just this modern idea invented either after the French Revolution
Speaker 1: or as a function of the Industrial Revolution to aid
Speaker 1: in modernization and the production of mass culture. So Popper,
Speaker 1: in some way he's ahead of his time. I'm with
Speaker 1: the theories that are about to come. But I mean,
Speaker 1: this is an incredibly radical claim that that a group
Speaker 1: of German idealist philosophers just invented nationalism one Thursday mornings.
Speaker 1: It's quite something. So he's really radical. I mean, he
Speaker 1: goes further than most modernist theorists even would go in
Speaker 1: his understanding of nationalism. So in the Open Society, at
Speaker 1: one point he says, none of the theories which maintained
Speaker 1: that a nation is united by a common origin or
Speaker 1: a common language or a common history is acceptable or
Speaker 1: applicable in practice. The principle of the national state is
Speaker 1: not only inapplicable, but it has never been clearly conceived.
Speaker 1: It is a myth. It is an irrational, romantic and
Speaker 1: utopian dream, a dream of naturalism and of tribal collectivism.
Speaker 1: And then elsewhere he celebrates cosmopolitan empire as the ideal,
Speaker 1: and again it's just a remarkably simplistic understand and of history.
Speaker 1: At one point he says that after Aristotle's student Alexander
Speaker 1: created his empire, that we basically had two millennia where
Speaker 1: there was no nationalism, tribalism, ethnic collectivist politics. It's incredible,
Speaker 1: he says, But this early development of nationalist political theory,
Speaker 1: he's talking about the work of Plato there stops short
Speaker 1: with Aristotle. With Alexander's empire, genuine tribal nationalism disappears forever
Speaker 1: from political practice and for a long time from political theory.
Speaker 1: From Alexander onward, all the civilized states of Europe and
Speaker 1: Asia were empires, embracing populations of infinitely mixed origin. European
Speaker 1: civilization and all the political units belonging to it have
Speaker 1: remained international or more precisely inter tribal. Ever, since where
Speaker 1: do you even start with that? I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: if you want to talk about ethnic collectivist tribal politics,
Speaker 1: since Alexander, I mean, you know, we talk about the
Speaker 1: Spanish reconquists, that talk about, you know, the Middle Ages.
Speaker 1: Medieval historians recognized now that the modern European nation states
Speaker 1: basically all existed in some form by it by the
Speaker 1: Middle Ages. But I mean you can go on and on.
Speaker 1: I mean, you can talk about the you know, you
Speaker 1: can talk about the Jewish revolts his own people, right,
Speaker 1: But I mean, I think for our audience we probably
Speaker 1: don't even need to get into the case that from
Speaker 1: Alexander the Great to Hegel there has been ethnic, tribal
Speaker 1: and racial politics. It's quite an incredible claim.
Speaker 2: Saint Bede must have made a mistake when he defined
Speaker 2: the English in the seventh century or whatever it was.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like I said, it's an incredible claim. Even the
Speaker 1: most radical anti nationalist theorists, I mean to just say
Speaker 1: that there's he says, there's no foundation. He says nations
Speaker 1: are infinitely mixed. Even the you know, the modern constructors
Speaker 1: of nation states, you know, they say your country doesn't
Speaker 1: exist because you're you're actually angles and Saxons and Normans
Speaker 1: and Vikings. Popper has going further. It's just like it's
Speaker 1: an infinity mix. It's like every single individual and I
Speaker 1: guess then you can break down the individuals as well.
Speaker 1: But yeah, he also makes this argument that nationalism is
Speaker 1: pos is impossible because no one can clearly define where
Speaker 1: the nation starts and ends, and even if you could,
Speaker 1: no one can exactly match the borders to that. Again,
Speaker 1: just such a juvenile argument, like the kind of thing
Speaker 1: that if you encountered it on, you know, in your
Speaker 1: Twitter comments, you'd like block the person and move on,
Speaker 1: because it's just so juvenile. It is a fallacy. It's
Speaker 1: this nirvana fallacy that well, you can't establish perfectly some
Speaker 1: perfect map of exactly what you want to utopia, so
Speaker 1: therefore this political project is ridiculous. It's like, you know,
Speaker 1: no one is saying we're gonna have like a perfect
Speaker 1: ethnic boundary with like one one hundred percent ethnic group
Speaker 1: in said country, but it's like, who's making this argument?
Speaker 1: So he has these you see it slipped through when
Speaker 1: he's arguing against these topics. He's clearly very passionate about it. It's
Speaker 1: just very kind of lazy argumentation, and that really comes
Speaker 1: true with his explanation for how nationalism emerges. And so,
Speaker 1: as you said, he says Hegel is employed in the
Speaker 1: service of Prussian statesman, and then he cites Herder and
Speaker 1: his idea of a German culture, and then Ficta kind
Speaker 1: of solidifies the idea of a German nation, and really
Speaker 1: in three four pages of the Open Society he skims
Speaker 1: through it and says, this handful of German intellectuals just
Speaker 1: invented nationalism. And you know, that's really as deep as
Speaker 1: it goes. As well, they wrote a nation state exists,
Speaker 1: and then people started believing in nationalism because they had
Speaker 1: you know, they had done what Plato did and tapped
Speaker 1: into people's worst tribalistic urges. And again even makes this
Speaker 1: argument against Kta that Ficta says that the nation is
Speaker 1: united by common language, that's the root of the common culture.
Speaker 1: And you know, he again he makes this kind of
Speaker 1: purity argument of well, what is every German speaking person
Speaker 1: going to be included in Germany? Very unimpressive, but again
Speaker 1: there's a problem with this theory that plagues all of
Speaker 1: these modernist theories of nationalism is he's saying, well, Ficta
Speaker 1: appealed to the idea of German nationalism, and that created
Speaker 1: the German nation, that created nationalism. But it's like, well, clearly,
Speaker 1: if these intellectuals could appeal to a sense of germanists,
Speaker 1: then a sense of Germanists already existed, right. There was
Speaker 1: something there to tap into. There was a sense of
Speaker 1: a German people common culture. This wasn't something that intellectuals
Speaker 1: had to construct and explain to people if they were
Speaker 1: part of the group or not. This was obviously a
Speaker 1: lived experience. And in so far as you start to
Speaker 1: see intellectuals tap into it and describe it more, and
Speaker 1: as far as you start to see it use more
Speaker 1: for political purposes, well that's really because more people are
Speaker 1: becoming politicized, more people are becoming literate, more people are
Speaker 1: entering into these mass democratic systems we have. And this
Speaker 1: is just such an obvious contradiction that exists throughout this
Speaker 1: explanation where he's talking about, well, then this thinker came
Speaker 1: up with this element of German culture and this sinker
Speaker 1: appeal to this, and it's like, well, what, there's obviously
Speaker 1: this huge background that they're appealing to. And again it's
Speaker 1: this problem like I discussed with Jordan Peterson before, where
Speaker 1: sometimes intellectuals are overly reductive in how much history is
Speaker 1: determined by intellectuals. You know, when you blame you blame
Speaker 1: modern leftism on French neo Marxist theory. And it's the
Speaker 1: same thing here where he's looking to a group of
Speaker 1: intellectuals and philosophers that were only ever read or understood
Speaker 1: by a very tiny percentage of the pop and he's
Speaker 1: saying that somehow, this incredibly potent, powerful force of nationalism
Speaker 1: that has come to dominate the world over most states
Speaker 1: in the world are nation states that are ethnically based.
Speaker 1: He's attributed that to a handful of German intellectuals in
Speaker 1: the eighteenth to nineteenth century that you know, used some
Speaker 1: dangerous ideas. And it's like, well, what does that say
Speaker 1: about the power of whatever national identities were pre existing
Speaker 1: there and the weakness of the liberal cosmopolitan idea. If
Speaker 1: three four German philosophers can strength some words together and
Speaker 1: it creates this massive, totalizing, globe spanning force that overtrows
Speaker 1: all the empires in the world.
Speaker 2: He just made me think of the story of Arminius.
Speaker 2: He was a German boy taken into the Roman legions
Speaker 2: because the Germans had to pay tribute, and he ended
Speaker 2: up returning to the blood betraying the Roman legion. And
Speaker 2: you know that was the victory of tudor Burgh Forest,
Speaker 2: which is you know, legendary in German history, and you
Speaker 2: know Spengler always references it, so you know that as
Speaker 2: yet another example of nationalism against you know, what was
Speaker 2: by then a multi ethnic empire. So you know, Popper
Speaker 2: is just constantly cherry picking all over the place to
Speaker 2: present this absurd, you know, completely atomizing thesis that you
Speaker 2: know is basically just a result of his upbringing in
Speaker 2: a cosmopolitan intellectual environment and you know, his systematizing brain,
Speaker 2: which you know can you know, infinitely deconstruct things which
Speaker 2: don't suit him. So that's my I have.
Speaker 1: I actually wrote something on this before Ethno Politics of
Speaker 1: the Holy Roman Empire showing that because I think it's
Speaker 1: an interesting case study because the Holy Roman Empire is
Speaker 1: taken as this ultimate medieval state rights it's fragmented into
Speaker 1: a thousand different duchies and principalities and little provinces and
Speaker 1: so on, and it's the ultimate like oh, nationalism as
Speaker 1: a modern invention, because this is what the medieval map
Speaker 1: looked like. You know, try and find Germany on that map.
Speaker 1: But then you look at it and well, there actually
Speaker 1: there was a strong sense of German identity and there
Speaker 1: was a sense of German nation such that not long
Speaker 1: into the empire's existence. For most of the empire's existence,
Speaker 1: it was known as the Holy Roman Empire of the
Speaker 1: German nation. That's the bit that that's usually left out.
Speaker 1: But yeah, most of the rulers were German. You know,
Speaker 1: the Council of Princes that that elected and emperor was
Speaker 1: overwhelmingly dominated by German. Yeah, there was a German vernacular.
Speaker 1: You know, there were national theater and literature that encompassed
Speaker 1: all of these provinces, and way before the advent of
Speaker 1: when people say nationalism was invented, before Hegel and fiktas
Speaker 1: Popper describes it, I mean, you know, centuries prior, you
Speaker 1: had thinkers that were talking about the future of the
Speaker 1: German nation and if it would be better that eventually
Speaker 1: it were united and the fragmentation of the Holy Roman
Speaker 1: Empire was ended. You know, there was strong ethnic based
Speaker 1: theories about the lineage from the Roman Empire, the inheritance
Speaker 1: of the Roman Empire to the Germans. German scholars began
Speaker 1: to take pride in the way the Romans had described
Speaker 1: the character of the German race, as written about by Tacitus,
Speaker 1: another Roman historian. So it's all there, the sense of
Speaker 1: an ethnic collective, of a national group, it's all there.
Speaker 1: And Popper just kind of waves away that by saying,
Speaker 1: there's just something called tribalism that is there somewhere. It's
Speaker 1: some kind of dark matter. It doesn't have any particular
Speaker 1: group that it's attached to, there's no real reality for it.
Speaker 1: But there's just this something underneath the surface called tribalism.
Speaker 1: And then thinkers kind of construct that into nation state
Speaker 1: or national culture with their dangerous ideas. It doesn't stand
Speaker 1: up to scrutiny at all. And yeah, I mean, this
Speaker 1: is what you find again and again is whether you know,
Speaker 1: the way he deals with history, the way he deals
Speaker 1: with competing political theories, it's extremely intellectually sloppy. It's quite
Speaker 1: incredible sometimes when you look at how lacking and rigorous
Speaker 1: some of the you know, some very prominent public intellectuals
Speaker 1: there when they look at anything outside the narrow field
Speaker 1: they're working on.
Speaker 2: I know he was involved in some other areas like epistemology,
Speaker 2: you know, being his main field. But do you think
Speaker 2: he built his clout in that domain and was then
Speaker 2: able to transfer into politics and he was kind of
Speaker 2: kind of running off that reputation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think so. I think Bertrand Russell was actually
Speaker 1: a big part of the reason that the Open Society
Speaker 1: became popular. He did a lot to popularize it and
Speaker 1: to help with Popper's reputation. And yeah, and in the
Speaker 1: nineteen thirties, I mean he was close to the Vienna Circle,
Speaker 1: which was the school of again dominated by Jewish thinkers
Speaker 1: that were focused on verificationism and this kind of positivistic
Speaker 1: trend in philosophy. And that was Popper's contribution was a
Speaker 1: theory of science, of scientific realism, that science progresses through
Speaker 1: verificationism and falsifiability is the key of a good scientific theory,
Speaker 1: and that's how we can know what's true and false
Speaker 1: in science is to falsify theories. Now, even that is
Speaker 1: not really accepted as a good theory about pistemology. Now,
Speaker 1: you know, the best theories we have, they get falsified
Speaker 1: all the time. In certain aspects. Newtonian physics was falsified
Speaker 1: again and again certain elements of it. But we keep
Speaker 1: the paradigm, we keep the structure because the core, the
Speaker 1: important assumptions, are still useful to explain other things. So
Speaker 1: you know, this idea of you know, Thomas Kuhne, that
Speaker 1: science operates on paradigms and you have paradigm shifts where
Speaker 1: we change the meta level assumptions. That's a much more
Speaker 1: powerful explanation of how science works. But yes, he was.
Speaker 1: He was part of that tendency in philosophy and in
Speaker 1: science of trying to establish a rigorous verificationist, fully empirical
Speaker 1: modeling of reality that didn't require any of the you know,
Speaker 1: the philosophers or the metaphysicians. It was a deeply flawed project,
Speaker 1: and I think he carried over a lot of the
Speaker 1: same kinds of flaws to his political project again and
Speaker 1: in the world way that he just so much is
Speaker 1: assumed in terms of the assumption of you know, the
Speaker 1: negative utilitarianism and the good of reducing suffering, and of
Speaker 1: individual liberty and individual conscience, and the evils of tyranny
Speaker 1: and nationalism and stalitarianism. I mean, so many of these
Speaker 1: things are just not spelled out like it's a it's
Speaker 1: kind of a guidebook for people that already agree with them.
Speaker 1: It's an explanation of why people that disagree with the
Speaker 1: liberal model have have been able to gain power or
Speaker 1: what the force of their ideas has been. But is
Speaker 1: fundamental kind of guiding ethos. It does just rest on
Speaker 1: this kind of you know, post Christian foundation that role
Speaker 1: meant to take for granted, this basic liberal individualism. And
Speaker 1: of course at the same time he's proposing a pluralist
Speaker 1: institutional framework that in the long run, it hollows out
Speaker 1: national identity, it hollows out sense of any sense of
Speaker 1: civic pride or shared understanding. And these are all things
Speaker 1: that are necessary to have the common foundations for us
Speaker 1: to come together and reason and be rational beings and
Speaker 1: establish institutions and trust and scientific reproducibility. I mean all
Speaker 1: of these things that he says are necessary for the
Speaker 1: successful open society. They require high trust societies. They require
Speaker 1: shared culture and understanding and a shared value for the
Speaker 1: things that he values, And never does he explain what
Speaker 1: the source of that is. How do you inculcate those values?
Speaker 1: How do you inculcate those morals, how are people going
Speaker 1: to continue believing the things that he believes are important
Speaker 1: are important? And of course most of the world does
Speaker 1: not value scientific investigation and objective reason, and you know,
Speaker 1: value lessening the suffering of the poorest over the excellence
Speaker 1: of the highest, these kinds of things, and these are
Speaker 1: very Western, narrow cultural values. And you can see at
Speaker 1: the time of the Cold War and after the Second
Speaker 1: World War, how you can imagine they're universal. But of
Speaker 1: course now we see partly open societies are breaking down
Speaker 1: because of imported diversity. And this is obviously you can
Speaker 1: see that even people that agree with Popper, you'll see
Speaker 1: guys like Sam Harris then well, actually, course, correction, we
Speaker 1: can't have the open society and import tens of millions
Speaker 1: of Muslims that are going to engage in ethnic collective
Speaker 1: as politics. Popper doesn't have an answer for any of this.
Speaker 1: He never even he never even considers it. But this
Speaker 1: is obviously fundamental, is what is the basis for any
Speaker 1: of this and what is the kind of societal glue
Speaker 1: that's going to hold all of it together.
Speaker 2: So it's amazing how far this theory has got. You know,
Speaker 2: immediately after the end of World War two, West Germany
Speaker 2: starts creating a new constitution, and we see the godfather, well,
Speaker 2: the father of that constitution, drawing heavily on on Popper's
Speaker 2: open society. He was a man named Carlo Schmid, not
Speaker 2: to be confused with Carl Schmidt.
Speaker 1: It's kind of a funny irony, isn't it. Like the
Speaker 1: it's like the two polarities of the German mind, cal
Speaker 1: Schmidt and Carolo Schmid is like, yeah, one is the
Speaker 1: ultimate like you know, pluralist, institutionalized values, and the one
Speaker 1: is the ultimate decisionist.
Speaker 2: Yeah. It's very strange to me that a legal scholar
Speaker 2: with that kind of responsibility, you know, draws on what
Speaker 2: I would consider a very sloppy work, a very intellectually
Speaker 2: dishonest work, and then sets about, you know, the writing
Speaker 2: the legal foundation of his nation, which could define, you know,
Speaker 2: whether it even exists into the future.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Popper also had a teaching job at the London School
Speaker 2: of Economics. George Soros was one of his students, and
Speaker 2: George Soros, you know, after his trauma in World War Two,
Speaker 2: was very interested in the ideas that Popper was presenting.
Speaker 2: He had a very similar background in a cosmopolitan city
Speaker 2: in the Austro Hungarian Empire. And George Soros went on
Speaker 2: to make a lot of money in finance and then
Speaker 2: he used that money for philanthropy. He you know, created
Speaker 2: the Central European University. He hired you know, jurist legal
Speaker 2: scholars to influence the constitutions of the Warsaw Pac countries
Speaker 2: after the Berlin War came down, and the you know,
Speaker 2: the modern German constitution. So you know, this, this, this work,
Speaker 2: which I would you know, consider very sloppy, intellectually dishonest,
Speaker 2: has just had this huge impact literally changing the definition
Speaker 2: of democracy itself. And people are only just realizing what
Speaker 2: it's going to take to reverse this course. The decline
Speaker 2: in birth rates, the the lack of meaning we seem
Speaker 2: to have in our lives now, the you know, the
Speaker 2: ever progressive multiculture that you know confuses and depresses people
Speaker 2: and puts them in danger. This is you know, all
Speaker 2: downstream of Popper's work, of George Soros's activism, and it yeah,
Speaker 2: very important to you know, set out how how this
Speaker 2: has happened and you know, critique it. And you know,
Speaker 2: Popper's work came at the right time in history. He
Speaker 2: was able to instantiate his will on the world because
Speaker 2: he presented and an argument, an idea at the right time.
Speaker 2: I believe now is our time. We need to be
Speaker 2: doing the same in the opposite direction. You know, maybe
Speaker 2: even we'll we'll translate this episode into German via AI,
Speaker 2: because you know, many Germans might may not even realize
Speaker 2: the you know, kind of legal prison they are now in.
Speaker 2: And you know, there's going to be a reckoning. And
Speaker 2: there are a lot of other intellectuals, you know, desperate
Speaker 2: to maintain this version of pluralism, you know, from Anne Apple, Balm,
Speaker 2: Sam Harris, as you've meant. I've even got a book here,
Speaker 2: How Democracies Die by is it Levitsky and Ziblat. This
Speaker 2: is a very kind of normy accessible book that basically
Speaker 2: paints the Republican Party as you know, a fascist party
Speaker 2: and sort of talks about the polarization of American politics
Speaker 2: and the need for very strong institutions. And you know,
Speaker 2: these people always go on about the need for very
Speaker 2: strong institutions and democratic norms, and you know, it's all
Speaker 2: a very delicate game that we're playing, and we need
Speaker 2: to nudge it around. And you know, but Popper himself
Speaker 2: uses this phrase piecemeal social engineering. And the people that
Speaker 2: are in control of our political systems, now that is
Speaker 2: how they see the world. They see our existence as
Speaker 2: nations is just the technocratic project. The you know, the
Speaker 2: system you know, takes on a kind of divine character
Speaker 2: and they see it as their job to nudge it around.
Speaker 2: And you know, have strong institutions to prevent the ever again,
Speaker 2: prevent the specter of authoritarianism, and you know all these
Speaker 2: other things, and you know, it just fills up. We're
Speaker 2: trapped in this stasis without meaning, without the you know,
Speaker 2: even the legal right to express our feelings.
Speaker 1: So reading it back today, the up in society, I mean,
Speaker 1: like havn't researched some of these topics, more like the
Speaker 1: nationalism section for example, where he's talking about these guys
Speaker 1: inventing nationalism and where he's talking about it, there's this
Speaker 1: long period of where there's there's no ethnic politics in Europe.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's like you can go true sentence by
Speaker 1: sentence and there's just so many problems. There's such a
Speaker 1: lack of historical knowledge or just intentionally misleading or even lying,
Speaker 1: and you know, there's no arguments presented against any of
Speaker 1: the philosophy of Plato against played Inis metaphysics or pistemology
Speaker 1: or any of these things. And you know, the point
Speaker 1: is he didn't win because he has the better arguments, Like,
Speaker 1: none of this is rigorous, none of this is comprehensive,
Speaker 1: there's no foundation for any of his own beliefs. He
Speaker 1: can't really ground any of it. It's it's sort of
Speaker 1: just taken for granted that the reader will appreciate this
Speaker 1: package of open society beliefs that he's presenting. But he
Speaker 1: influenced the right people, Like you said, it came at
Speaker 1: the right time. George Soros is a student of his.
Speaker 1: Influential legal theorists and jurists, there are students of his,
Speaker 1: and you know, it's again, you find again and again
Speaker 1: sometimes you go back to the foundation of the postwar
Speaker 1: order of post war liberal progressive theory, and it's just
Speaker 1: profoundly lacking in depth and historical understanding and philosophical rigor.
Speaker 1: But yet it is and will remain one of the
Speaker 1: most influential texts of any kind, not just political philosophy,
Speaker 1: but of any kind of of the twentieth century, and
Speaker 1: Popper's legacy endurers. But yeah, it's it's important for us
Speaker 1: to understand the foundations of the open society, pluralism and
Speaker 1: the attack on on on real democracy and on nationalism
Speaker 1: that this system has given way to. Now that will
Speaker 1: be the battle of our age. They recognize it, the
Speaker 1: authors of how democracies are recognized, and yeah, that's that's
Speaker 1: the new playing field. But yeah, that's it for now.
Speaker 1: Thanks for tuning in, Thanks run as always, and take care.