Karl Popper - The Formative Years, 1902 1945

This intellectual biography recovers the legacy of Karl Popper (1902-1994), the progressive, cosmopolitan, Viennese socialist who combated fascism, revolutionized the philosophy of science, and envisioned the Open Society. Malachi Hacohen draws a compelling portrait of the philosopher, the assimilated Jewish intelligentsia, and the vanished culture of Red Vienna, which was decimated by Nazism. Seeking to rescue Popper from his postwar conservative and anticommunist reputation, Hacohen restores his works to their original Central European contexts and, at the same time, shows that they have urgent messages for contemporary politics and philosophy.

This intellectual biography examines the early life of one of the 20th century's most influential philosophers. Born in Vienna, Popper (1902-1994) grew up among educated, middle-class Jews who, despite their efforts at assimilation (Popper's father was Lutheran by conversion), still suffered prejudice. Though Nazism would eventually force him out of Europe, Popper spent the interwar years in Austria, developing the foundations of both his character and his soon-to-be-influential ideas. Like most of his countrymen, he believed that Jews' high public profile in the arts, sciences and professions contributed to anti-Semitism; he eschewed all religious practice, condemned Zionism and established a "life-long pattern" as "eternal dissenter and intellectual loner." In the mid-1930s he fled to a university in New Zealand; later, he secured a prestigious post at the London School of Economics. But Hacohen, an Israeli-born historian (Duke University), doesn't just map out the biographical details of Popper's early life. He combines them with critical readings of the philosopher's most important writings from these yearsAThe Open Society and Its Enemies, The Logic of Scientific DiscoveryAto argue against a contemporary academic trend. "Popper," Hacohen asserts, struggled with " 'poststructuralist' dilemmas" (like the notion that language both describes and invents the world) but crafted different solutions to these questions than today's scholars do. And Popper's contributions along these lines have been forgotten, in part, Hacohen suggests, because scholars have ignored the first half of his career. By remedying this oversight, Hacohen also "recommend[s Popper's] solutions as against poststructuralist ones." While much of Hacohen's book is accessible to analysts of language and philosophers of science, its rich evocation of the turbulent yet vital interwar Vienna should win this formidable book a wider readership. (Sept.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Karl Popper is famous for his thesis that scientific theories are never confirmed yet can always be falsified and for his blistering attacks on ideologies that lead to tyranny. The two positions form a passionate defense of the individual against bureaucracy. The lone individual, Popper argued, can overturn a powerful scientific theory with a single negative example, while most political ideologies, including those of Marx and Hegel, are empty and incapable of confirmation or falsification. Without such theories, people must come together to make their own futures. Cold warriors welcomed Popper, though he never intended to justify egocentric individualism. This book explores his youthful Viennese socialism and his disillusionment with those who passively fell victim to Nazism because they assumed history would work in their favor. A Jew who battled against Israeli "tribal nationalism" and a conscientious thinker sometimes exploited by an unscrupulous Far Right, Popper, who settled in England, was always an odd man out. Hacohen (intellectual history, Duke Univ.) here draws on previously unexplored archives. His story is exciting and his scholarship meticulous, but ponderous prose will confine his book to academic libraries.DLeslie Armour, Univ. of Ottawa, Ont.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.