What position do values occupy in a
world of facts?
Ethics according to Karl Popper
Júlio Fontana
Abstract: The present article aims at comprehending how Karl Popper
understood ethics. He had no intention to “preach” an ethics, for he
thought that was unnecessary. Nonetheless, he was a moral person.
And for being so, his whole thought was influenced by it. We could
better understand his cosmology, methodology, and philosophy if we
investigated the ethical bases that guide his life and thought. In truth,
we might say that the whole of Popper’s thought is rooted in ethics.
Keywords: Karl Popper – Ethics – Moral - Problem
On the evening of Friday, 25 October 1946 the Cambridge Moral Science Club
– a weekly discussion group for the university’s philosophers and philosophy students – held one of its regular meetings. That evening the guest speaker was Dr. Karl
Popper, down from London to deliver an innocuous-sounding paper, “Are There
Philosophical Problems?” Among his audience was the chairman of the club, Professor Ludwig Wittgenstein, considered by many to be the most brilliant philosopher of his time. We do not know for sure what happened on such famous evening.
All we know of the event is that Wittgenstein started to wave a fire poker and then
stormed out of the room.
True in this story is that the reason for Wittgenstein’s sudden leaving was an
argument about moral (or ethics). Journalists David Edmonds and John Eidinow,
from BBC, who wrote a book on the event, state that after Wittgenstein’s leaving,
Braithwaite asked Popper to give an example of moral principle. Popper promptly
answered: “Not to threaten visiting lecturers with pokers”.
For Wittgenstein, the propositions of metaphysics, ethics, aesthetics and religion
lack sense, because they try to overcome the limits of language, thus of the world.
Popper disagrees. So the argument between Popper and Wittgenstein must have
had ethics as its final subject. Hence we see the importance ethics holds for Popper
and this is why it is so important to examine and confront it with the totality of his
system.
Philosophy student at PUC-Rio.
Edmonds, D. O atiçador de Wittgenstein: a história de uma discussão de dez minutos entre dois
grandes filósofos. Rio de Janeiro, Difel, 2003. pp. 269-284. [Wittgenstein’s poker: The story of a
tem-minute argument between two great philosophers. New York, HarperCollins, 2001.]
Ciberteologia - Journal of Theology & Culture – Year II, n. 17
What does Popper understands by ethics?
Popper’s use of the words “ethics” and “moral”
Great part of the dictionaries of philosophy makes a distinction between ethics
and moral. The Dicionário básico de filosofia, for example, defines “ethics” as the
part of the practical philosophy whose objective is to elaborate a reflection on the basic problems
of moral (the end and sense of human life, the basics of obligation and duty, the nature of good
and evil, the value of moral consciousness etc.), but founded in a metaphysical state of the group
of rules of conduct considered universally valid. Differently from moral, ethics is more concerned
with detecting the principles of a life according to philosophical wisdom, with elaborating a
reflection on the reasons to wish for justice and harmony and on the means to reach them.
Moral is more concerned with the construction of a set of prescriptions destined to ensure a just,
harmonious common life.
Nevertheless, the same lexicon explains that
In a wide sense, moral is a synonym for ethics as the theory of values that rule the human action
or conduct, having a normative or a prescriptive character. In a stricter sense, moral relates to
costumes, values, and specific norms of conduct of a society or culture, while ethics considers the
human action from its valuative and normative point of views, in a more generic and abstract sense.
Hence, we need to know in which sense – wide or strict – Popper uses these
words. To do so, we should go back to the text itself, for our philosopher did not
give us a definition of them nor said how he would use them
The following excerpt may help us:
I cannot admit that thinking the ethical laws as being made by the human being is, in such
sense, incompatible with the religious standpoint that they were given to us by God. Historically,
the whole of ethics undoubtedly begins with religion; but I am not dealing now with historical
questions. I am not questioning who the first ethical legislator was. I affirm that we, and we
only, are responsible for the adoption or rejection of certain suggested moral laws. It is we who
distinguish between the true prophets and the false prophets.
We see that Popper does not make a distinction between the terms “ethics” and
“moral”. So he uses both terms in their wider sense.
Nevertheless, it is not enough to analyse Popper’s use of the term ethics to understand what he meant by it.
Popper’s theory of the three worlds
Popper calls World 1 the world of physical entities, those we all call real, that
is, the objects, the living beings, the planets, the water, the sun and the moon. The
physical processes are also in this world: the forces, the force fields, light, sound
waves, electricity, atoms etc. It is the world of facts.
World 2 is the world of our subject experiences, our sensations, our conscious
perceptions, that is, of our mental states. We must emphasize that Popper does not
state, as Descartes did, that this world is composed by immaterial entities.
For Popper, World 3 is the world of cultural entities, those things produced by
man, such as tools, theories, language (language is a tool), the alphabet (the alpha Japiassu, H. & Marcondes, D. Dicionário básico de filosofia. 3. ed. Rio de Janeiro, Zahar, 1996. p.
93.
Id., ibid. p. 187.
Popper, K. 1999. pp. 79f. — Italics added. The Kantian concept of autonomy is evident.
Ciberteologia - Journal of Theology & Culture – Year II, n. 17
bet is a technology), the works of art, myths, religion etc. It is important to observe
that all that is/was created by man depends, in a way or another, of World 2. World
3 is the world of the human mind’s products, it is man’s cultural world.
For our following analysis, it is important to notice that this is the world where
the ethical precepts or “moral demands” are ontologically placed, as it may be seen
in the following passage: “The human being created new worlds ― of language, of
music, of poetry, of science; and the most important of them is the world of moral
demands, for equality, freedom, and care for the weak”.
In fact, these three worlds interact, but they do so according to some rules. World
3 does not directly interact with World 1, and vice-versa. World 2 is a forceable passage. World 3 is autonomous in relation to the other worlds.
I will quote a classical example in the philosophy of mind: the toothache.
A toothache is both a mental and a physical state. If you have a strong toothache,
this is a very good reason for you to see your dentist, which involves a great number
of actions and physical movements of your body. The cavities in your tooth – a material physical-chemical process – will lead to physical effects; but you will go to the
dentist by force of your feelings of pain and the knowledge of existing institutions,
such as dentistry. Here, all three worlds are interacting.
This is all very trivial; nonetheless, the mental states’ reality has been denied by
some philosophers. Others admit mental states are real, but deny their interaction
with the world of physical states.
According to the quoted example, we can affirm the reality of World 2, that is,
the reality of mental states.
Let us now see World 3. The reality of this world is more difficult to be accepted.
By World 3 we understand the products of the human mind, such as stories,
explanatory myths, artefacts, scientific theories (both true and false), scientific problems, social institutions, and works of art. The objects of World 3 are those of our
own making, although they are not always the result of a planned production by
individual human beings.
Many of the objects of World 3 exist under the form of material bodies and, in a
certain sense, belong both to World 1 and World 3. Examples of this are sculptures,
paintings, and books, whether of scientific or literary subjects. A book is a physical
object, thus it belongs to World 3; but what makes it a significant product of the
human mind is its content, which remains unchangeable in its several copies and
editions. Such content belongs to World 3.
One of Popper’s main theses is that “the objects of World 3 may be real, not only
in its materializations and embodiments in World 1, but also in its aspects, in World
3”. As I have previously said, World 3 interacts with World 1 in a mediated, indirect
way through World 2.
I will mention an example of our daily life: laws. A law is a product of World
3. Is law reduced to the several codes? Most people have never read a single of
these codes and obey many of its laws. Is law a mental state that happens in many
individuals in a similar way? I believe it is very unlikely to be so. In fact, we would
rather some laws did not exist. Law is a product of the human mind, it is cultural,
Definitions of culture may be found in the dictionary.
Popper, K. 1999. p. 79.
Id. 1999. p. 62.
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and its sources are the costumes and traditions of a given society; thus its ontological place is in World 3.
Does anyone find it unlikely that laws have a direct influence on what we do
in our daily life? In fact, we often avoid certain attitudes due to the existence of
laws. Don’t you think so? Psychoanalyst, philosopher, and pedagogue Rubem Alves
says:
If society imposes bans, that is because desires seek to seep in. It is not necessary to forbid people
from eating stones, because nobody wants that. Only what is desired is banned. Thus, there may
be laws forbidding incest, theft, nakedness, sexual intercourse in public, cruelty against children
and animals, murder, homosexuality, the offence to constituted powers. Because these are strong
desires. The stronger the temptation to transgress society’s established order, the stronger the
repression and censorship apparatus.10
Thus, I believe there is no need to speak of the interaction between World 3 and
World 1 through World 2.
I will now demonstrate that World 3 has certain autonomy in relation to the
others. I will make use of an example to show it. We might say that, when the Babylonians invented a sufficiently rich language, they were the first ones, as far as
we know, to design a number system in which one can go on and on and on. We
have a similar number system, a series of unending natural numbers: 1, 2, 3, 4 etc.
Such system contains a method that allows us to always go beyond any determined
number. Thus we may say the number system is a human product.11
Let us consider the odd and even numbers. We did not create them; they emerged
from the series of natural numbers. We cannot make a series of natural numbers
without creating odd and even numbers. This was an unintentional consequence
of something we made. In this example, the autonomy of World 3 becomes more
evident when we analyse the prime numbers.
Prime numbers are the unintentional result of the creation of natural numbers.
Prime numbers are those divisible by themselves and by one (unity). Among them
are 2; 3; 5; 7; 11; 13, and so forth. Prime numbers were not created by us and, in
a certain sense, are completely outside our domain. We know little about their distribution and a general formula was not yet established. Only through the help of
trial-and-error methods can we say that a very large number is a prime one.12
The example reveals something very important. Popper says that “although numbers are manmade, they hold certain particularities that are not of our making, but
we have the possibility of finding out”.13
I will quote yet another example. German theologian Jürgen Moltmann is a thinker very close to Neomarxist Ernst Bloch, thus a non-pluralist person in principle. In
the Foreword of the 13th edition of his main work, Theology of hope, he says:
To edit a book again after 33 years and give it a new preface is naturally a risky thing. Books
also have their own timing. But some books have a very unique destiny, for they follow a way
that is all theirs. That is what happened to Theology of Hope. I published it in 1964. In 1967, its
Criminals thought laws did not influence their lives. Nonetheless, they were refuted and most of
them are now in prison.
10 Alves, R. O que é religião? São Paulo, Loyola, 2005. p. 89.
11 There were some who considered it of divine origin.
12 Twin prime numbers – prime numbers separated by an even number (3, 5; 5, 7; 11, 13; 17, 19;
29, 31; etc.) – have an end. However, this is one of the unsolved problems of number theory.
13 Popper, K. 1996. p. 33.
Ciberteologia - Journal of Theology & Culture – Year II, n. 17
English translation was published. Later, though, it escaped my control and made its own history;
a history I had not intended nor foreseen, but that reverted to me in many different ways.14
After its publication, his book became an inhabitant of World 3. It began to enjoy
an autonomy characteristic of any other inhabitant of our cultural world. To conclude, I acknowledge that:
1) the objects of World 3 are abstrat (even more abstract than physical forces), but
not less real, for they are powerful instruments to change World 1;
2) the objects of World 3 have an effect on World 1 only through human intervention, the intervention of its creators, especially while they are being perceived,
which is a process of World 2, a mental process, or, more precisely, a process in
which Worlds 2 and 3 interact; so
3) we must admit that both the objects of World 3 and the procedures of World 2
are real.
Values and facts
In his book, The Place of Value in a World of Fact, psychologist Wolfgang Köhler explained why few scientists and philosophers with scientific education bother
themselves to write about values. The reason is simple: much of what is said about
values is mere hot air.15 Popper comments this affirmation:
So many of us fear that we too would only produce hot air or, if not that, something not easily
distinguished from it. […] At least in the field of ethical theory (I do not include the Sermon on the
Mount), with its almost infinite literature, I cannot recall having read anything good and striking
except for Plato’s Apology of Socrates (in which ethical theory plays a subsidiary role), some of Kant’s
works, especially Foundations of the metaphysic of morals (which is not too successful) and Friedrich
Schiller’s elegiac couplets, which wittily criticise Kant’s rigorism. Perhaps I might add to this list
Schopenhauer’s Two fundamental problems of ethics. Except Plato’s Apology, and Schiller’s charming
reduction of Kant, none of these come anywhere near to achieving their aim. 16
Nevertheless, Köhler incites by saying that scientists and philosophers should
dare and run the risk to do so. Popper agrees, although he is very cautious. Our
philosopher says:
I shall therefore say nothing more than that values emerge together with problems; that values
could not exist without problems; and that neither values nor problems can be derived or
otherwise obtained from facts, though they often pertain to facts or are connected to them.17
Thus, for Popper ethics is related both to value and problems. I would like to
extend myself on this a bit further than Popper, because I think its briefness can give
way to many errors of interpretation.
The problem is something unquestionably objective, thus belonging to Wolrd 3.
What about value?
As Lalande shows, value can be subjective or objectively defined. Subjectively,
value is “the characteristic of things that make them more or less esteemed or de14 Moltmann, J. Teologia da esperança: estudos sobre os fundamentos e as conseqüências de
uma escatologia cristã. São Paulo, Editora Teológica-Loyola, 2005. p. 19. [Theology of hope: A
Contemporary Christian Eschatology. Augsburg Books, 1993.]
15 Confuse and intelligible language.
16 Popper, K. Autobiografia intelectual. São Paulo, Cultrix-Edusp, 1977. p. 203. [Unended quest; an
intellectual autobiography. London, Routledge, 2002.]
17 Id., ibid. pp. 203-204.
Ciberteologia - Journal of Theology & Culture – Year II, n. 17
sired by a subject or, more commonly, by a group of certain subjects”.18 Objectively,
value is “the characteristic of things that make them deserve more or less esteem”.19
Popper rejects the latter.
So, for Popper, value is subjective, that is, value always depends on someone to
valuate. Nonetheless, he believes values can become objective when submitted to
criticism. He says so in his Autobiography:
A thing, or an idea, or a theory, or an approach may be conjectured to be objectively
valuable in being of help in solving a problem or as a solution of a problem, whether or
not its value is consciously appreciated by those struggling to solve that problem. But if
our conjecture is formulated and submitted to discussion, it will belong to World 3. Or
else, a value (relative to a certain problem) may be created or discovered, and discussed,
in its relations to other values or to other problems; in this quite different case it too may
become an inmate of World 3. 20
Thus, by being submitted to criticism, value belongs to World 3 together with the
problem. Thus, Popper does not agree that values are in any way connected to facts,
which belong to World 1.21
Thus, Popper frees himself from the “ethical paradigm” that only the human being is a moral being.22 According to him,
Thus if we are right in assuming that once upon a time there was a physical world devoid of life,
this world would have been, I think, a world without problems and thus without values. It has
often been suggested that values enter the world only with consciousness. This is not my view.
I think that values enter the world with life; and if there is life without consciousness (as I think
there may well be, for there appears to be such a thing as dreamless sleep), then, I suggest, there
will also be objective values, even without consciousness.23
As Popper explains, there are two kinds of value: one created by life, by unconscious problems, and another created by the human spirit, based in previous solutions, in the attempt to solve problems that can be better or worse understood.
This is where Popper places values in a world of facts: in World 3 of problems
and traditions historically emergent, which is part of the world of facts – not the
facts of World 1, but those partially produced by the human mind. The world of
values transcends the world of the valueless facts ―, the world of the rough facts, as
it were.
Nature and convention
According to Popper, it is extremely necessary to make a distinction between
what is natural and what is convention. In other words: it is necessary to distinguish
between two different elements in the human being’s environment: his natural environment and his social environment.
18 Lalande, A. Vocabulário técnico e crítico da filosofia. São Paulo, Martins Fontes, 1999. p. 1.188.
19 Id., ibid. p. 1.189.
20 Popper, K. Autobiografia intelectual, cit., p. 204. [Unended quest; an intellectual biography.
London: Routledge, 2002.]
21 I remind that World 2 serves as an interface between Worlds 1 and 3.
22 At this point, Popper opposes Kant, who says, in his Critique of the power of judgement, that
without the human beings, the whole of creation would be like a simple, useless and aimless
desert”. Kant, I. apud Landim, M. L. P. F. Ética e natureza no pensamento de Bérgson. Rio de
Janeiro, Uapê, 2001. p. 159.
23 Popper, K. Autobiografia intelectual, cit., p. 204. [Unended quest, cit.]
Ciberteologia - Journal of Theology & Culture – Year II, n. 17
Popper acknowledges this is a difficult distinction to be made and apprehended,
because it seems most of us are yet strongly inclined to accept the peculiarities of
our social environment as if they were “natural”.
Protagoras was the first to see the need of such distinction. From then on, the
Greeks were enabled to give the next step, which was to abandon tribal society and
live in an open society.
A tribal society is one that lives in an enchanted circle of immutable taboos, of
laws and costumes considered inevitable, such as the rising of the sun, or the season cycles, or similar and evident regular events of nature.
The fall of the closed society causes a phenomena Popper calls “strain of civilization”, derived from the acknowledgement of human institutions’ transitory character. As we know, that happened with the Sophists, in Greece.24
Once this transitory character of institutions is acknowledged and a clear distinction between nature and convention is made, there comes what Popper calls
“critical dualism”:
Critical dualism merely asserts that norms and normative laws can be made and changed by
man, more especially by a decision or convention to observe them or to alter them, and that it
is therefore man who is morally responsible for them; not perhaps for the norms which he finds
to exist in society when he first begins to reflect upon them, but for the norms he is prepared to
tolerate once he has found out that he can do something to alter them. Norms are man-made in
the sense that we must blame nobody but ourselves for them; neither nature, nor God. It is our
business to improve them as much as we can, if we find that they are objectionable.25
Critical dualism, on its turn, causes the advent of the open society, which is a
society that supposes the free proposition of suggestions then submitted to criticism
and examination by the error elimination system. These are societies that allow the
unrestricted presentation of different propositions, followed by criticism and the effective possibility of change in the light of criticism.26
Thus, it is fundamental to explain the concept of critical dualism in order to understand the Poperian ethics.
The critical dualism makes a very important distinction: the distinction between
natural laws and normative laws.
A natural law describes a regular, strict, and invariable fact that effectively happens in nature (and in this case it is a true statement), or does not happen (and in
this case it is false).
A normative law, whether it is now a legal enactment or a moral commandment, can be enforced
by men. Also, it is alterable. It may be perhaps described as good or bad, right or wrong, acceptable
or unacceptable; but only in a metaphorical sense can it be called “true” or “false, since it does
not describe a fact, but lays down directives for our behaviour.27
24 It is important to read the chapter “Contrato social” [Social compact], from W. K. C. Guthrie’s Os
sofistas [The sophists] São Paulo, Paulus, 1995, pp. 127-137.
25 Popper, K. A sociedade aberta e seus inimigos. 3. ed. Belo Horizonte, Itatiaia, 1998. p. 75. [Open
society and its enemies. London, Routledge, 1995.]
26 Cf. Magee, B. As idéias de Popper. São Paulo, Cultrix-Edusp, 1974. p. 79. [Popper: a modern
master. Harper Trade, 1985]
27 Popper, K. A sociedade aberta e seus inimigos, cit. [Open society and its enemies. cit., p. 58] We
notice Popper is completely contrary to the natural-law doctrine. There are many works dealing
with the natural-law doctrine, but to the philosophical public, the most interesting one is Luigi
Ferrajoli’s A soberania no mundo moderno [Sovereignty in the Modern World], São Paulo, Martins
Fontes, 2002. This work does not deal specifically with the natural-law doctrine, but it shows very
Ciberteologia - Journal of Theology & Culture – Year II, n. 17
Having such distinction in mind, Popper explains that are moral decisions can
never derive from facts or asseverations about facts, although they refer to them. The
decision to oppose slavery, for instance, does not depend on the fact that every human being is born free and equal, that no human being is born in a prison, because,
although we are all born equal, some human beings can always try to imprison others and can even believe they should do so. Inversely, if human beings were born
in prison, many of us could demand such prison is removed.
Thus, all moral decisions are related to one or another fact, especially to a fact
from social life, and all (alterable) facts of social life can give birth to several different decisions. That shows decisions can never derive from theses facts or from a
description of these facts.
But, at the same time, Popper explains, they cannot derive from another class of
facts for those natural regularities we described with the help of the natural laws.
Thus, critical dualism emphasizes the impossibility of reducing decisions or norms
to facts. So it can be described as a dualism of facts and decisions.28
Such distinction between nature and convention is important also for Philosophy
of Law. The impact between juridical positivism and jusnaturalism is part of the
wider discussion we are having here.29
The ethical influences received from Karl Popper
As Hubert Kiesewetter points out, Popper was intellectually influenced, during his childhood, by different streams of thought, which were discussed in his
family circle or among his friends. Among these streams of thought, those of fundamental importance for his ethical thought were Josef Popper-Lynkeus’ (18381921), Bertha von Suttner’s (1843-1914) e Fridtjof Nansen’s (1861-1930).30 I will
not repeat this here.
I am convinced that the two greater ethical influences on Karl Popper’s thought
were Christianity and Immanuel Kant’s philosophy. The latter has certainly had
greater influence.
properly how it was used as a means of legitimation for several actions we would now consider
completely contrary to the natural law.
28
Cf. Popper, K. A sociedade aberta e seus inimigos, cit., p. 77. [Open society…, cit.]
29
As Hans Kelsen explains, “the natural-law doctrine affirms the existence of an absolutely just
regulation of human relations departing from nature in general or from the nature of the human
being endowed with reason. Nature is presented as a normative authority, as a kind of legislator.
By means of a careful analysis of nature we will be able to find its immanent norms that prescribe
the correct human conduct, that is, just. If nature is understood as a divine creation, then the
norms immanent to it – the natural law – are the expression of God’s will. The doctrine of nature
would thus have a metaphysical character. If, however, the natural law is deduced from the nature
of man as a being endowed with reason – not considering a divine origin for such reason –, we
deduce the principle of justice can be found in the human reason, with no appeal to a divine will,
so such doctrine has a rationalist character.” Kelsen, H. O que é justiça?: a justiça, o direito e a
política no espelho da ciência. São Paulo, Martins Fontes, 2001. pp. 21s. [What is justice? Justice,
Law and Politics in the Mirror of Science. Collected Essays. Berkeley/Los Angeles, University of
California Press, 1957.] Further in the same work, in the chapter named “The natural-law doctrine
before the tribunal of science”, Kelsen discusses the legitimacy of this doctrine (pp. 137-175).
30
O’Hear, A. Karl Popper: filosofia e problemas. São Paulo, Fundação Editora da Unesp, 1997.
pp. 326-330. [Karl Popper: philosophy and problems. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1995.]
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The Christian influence
The influence of Christianity seems unlikely in face of the statements of many
philosophers and scientists according to which Popper was an ardent atheist, even
though he often said he considered himself an agnostic.31 In response to the tendency of many scientists to consider Popper an atheist and an enemy of Christianity,
we must briefly examine what he said about religion, in general, and about Christianity, in particular.
First, we can list his criticism to the theist interpretation of history, which was
perfectly weaved in his work Open society and its enemies. Despite the criticism,
he made it clear that some of the greatest Christian thinkers repudiated such historicist theory as idolatry. And he adds: “An attack upon this form of historicism should
therefore not be interpreted as an attack upon religion”.32 An in his Autobiography
he states, “I am anything but an enemy of religion”.33
What Popper had in mind when he criticized religion were those kinds of blind
authority, fanaticism or magic that now seem stronger everyday. But a religion based
in the ideas of personal responsibility, freedom of consciousness, solidarity with the
poor, and equality between human beings, that is, Christianity in its purest sense,
has much in common with Popper’s ethics.
Furthermore, we may quote the relevance Popper attributed to Christianity due to
the fundamental importance it had in the construction of our Western civilization. He
believed our civilization owes its rationalism, its faith in the possibility of rational discourse, its base for an open society, and its scientific perspective to two traditions: the
ancient Socratic tradition and the Christian belief in the brotherhood of men.
In face of the influence of Christian ethics on Karl Popper’s thought, Kiesewetter
even affirmed that the Popperian philosophy “cannot be fully understood without a
reference to ethical patterns closely related to the Christian tradition”.34
The Christian ethics’ influence is very clearly seen in the following statement of Popper:
The most important of the Ten Commandments is: “Thou shall not kill”. It nearly contains the
whole of ethics. The way in which Schopenhauer, for example, formulates ethics is merely an
extension of this most important commandment. Schopenhauer’s ethics are simple, direct and
clear. He says: “Hurt no one, but help all, as well as you can”.35
Another Christian ethical principle that greatly influenced the Popper’s thought
was “Thou shalt Love thy neighbour”. This kind of altruism is not only a central doctrine of Christianity, but it became the basis of our Western civilization. All ethical
doctrines of individualism emerged from this moral demand. Popper’s social philosophy is based on it, as he himself expressed in Open society: “There is no other
thought that has had so much influence on the moral development of man”36
31 “Atheism is the belief that there is no God of any kind; agnosticism, which literally means ‘the
doctrine of not knowing’, is, in this context, the conviction that we do not have enough reason to
affirm or deny the existence of God.” (Hick, J. Filosofia da religião. Rio de Janeiro, Zahar, 1970. p.
15.) [Philosophy of religion. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1990.]
32 Popper, K. A sociedade aberta e seus inimigos, cit., p. 23. [Open society and its enemies, cit.]
33 Id. 1996. p. 123.
34 O’Hear, A. Karl Popper: filosofia e problemas, cit., p. 335. [Karl Popper: philosophy and problems,
cit, cit.]
35 Popper, K. Em busca de um mundo melhor. São Paulo, Martins Fontes, 2006. pp. 243s. [In search
of a better world. London, Routledge, 1995.]
36 Apud O’Hear, A. Karl Popper: filosofia e problemas, cit., p. 335. [Karl Popper: philosophy and
problems, cit.]
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What conclusions can be drawn from this commandment? First of all, every human individual has the right to exist and to be loved. Only a realistic worldview can
acknowledge the existence of other human beings that live, suffer, and die like us.
Secondly, a democratic society is not obliged to make its members happy. That has
nothing to do Christianity and is, in fact, an Antichristian interpretation of Christianity.
Despite the great influence the Christian ethics had on his philosophical thought,
he criticized it because the “Christian religion demands from us a purity of action
and thought that only saints can attain”.37 He also says that “this is why so many attempts to build a society imbued with the spirit of Christianity have been failures.
They have always, and inevitably, led to intolerance, to fanaticism”.38
The Kantian influence
The Kantian ethics is revolutionary in the sense that it inaugurates a set of very
peculiar concerns that cannot be taken as teleological, utilitarian or hedonist concerns. Professor Olinto Pegoraro well expresses this revolutionary character of the
Kantian ethics:
The Kantian revolution, departing from the scientific and philosophical fields, involves also the
ethical space. Kant is truly a central landmark in the history of ethics: on the one hand, he
represents the finish line of a movement that goes back to the end of the Middle Ages, according
to which, ethics consists in a balance between law and freedom; on the other hand, he is the
place of reference for the later ethical reflection.39
It is the Kantian concern to say that the human reason is insufficient to attain the
ideal model for the fulfilment of human happiness. One of his works, Critique of
pure reason, is a great effort precisely in that sense. Criticism detects in reason an
instrument incapable of furnishing all the explanations and producing all the necessary deductions to explain the ultimate reasons of the existence, of the wanting, of
the ethical choice.
What disquiets Kant in his discussions, on the one hand, is to expound the insufficiency of the rational system to solve the human ethical conflict, as well as, on the
other hand, to expound that one will not find the element that warrants happiness
and human ethical fulfilment in the sensitive experience.
Hence, it is concerned in basing the moral practice not in pure experience, but
in a law aprioristically inherent to the human universal rationality. This is where the
categorial imperative emerges.
This was a very rough outline of the Kantian moral’s basics. Nevertheless, our
aim now is not to analyse moral in Kant, but in Popper.
I believe one of Kant’s moral and political texts that influenced Popper the most
was An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?40, given on December 5th,
1783. Popper´s work In search of a better world gathers three of Popper’s lectures
in which he discusses themes derived from the Aufklärung. I will follow the order in
which it appears in the book itself.
37 Id. Em busca de um mundo melhor, cit., p. 272. [In search of a better world, cit.]
38 Id., ibid.
39 Pegoraro, O. Ética é justiça. Petrópolis, Vozes, 1995. p. 54.
40 In a lecture in Zurich, in 1958, Popper said, “I would like to present myself as an antique
philosopher – as an adherent of that movement long overcome and missing which Kant called
Enlightenment” (Em busca de um mundo melhor, cit., p. 263 [In search of a better world, cit.]).
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10
Enlightenment
“Enlightenment is the emancipation of man from a state of self-imposed tutelage.This
state is due to his incapacity to use his own intelligence without external guidance.”
Kant defined the Enlightenment (Aufklärung) as the human conquest of the state
of immaturity created by man himself. Immaturity is the incapability of using one’s
own reason without the guidance of others. The core of the Enlightenment is the
free use of reason.
This is precisely the meaning of autonomy. The word “autonomy” derives from
two Greek vocables: autos, which means “oneself”, and nomos, which means
“law”. Hence, autonomy means “to be the law to oneself”. The law is not outside,
but inside us, as our true self.
Popper comments that
Kant’s Copernican Revolution in the field of ethics is contained in his doctrine of autonomy
— the doctrine that we cannot accept the command of an authority, however exalted, as the
ultimate basis for ethics. For whenever we are faced by a command from an authority, it is our
responsibility to judge whether this command is moral or immoral.41
Nevertheless, Kant thought people lived more carefree when they let themselves
be guided by religious leaders, political chiefs or educational guides. They lived according to the heteronomy.
The word “heteronomy” also comes from two Greek vocables: heteros, which
means “strange”, “stranger”, and nomos, which means “law”. Hence, this is an inversion. Because, if we obeyed a foreign, outside authority, even if came from God,
we would have to go against our own will and end up by submitting ourselves to
something different from the most pure reason within us, such as our wishes, aspirations, the principle of pleasure etc. We would thus seek for a security deriving from
that alien authority that would take us our courage to use our own reason for fear of
being punished or falling into unsolvable problems.
On this, Popper comments that
The authority may have the power to enforce its commands, and we may be powerless to resist.
But unless we are physically prevented from choosing, the responsibility remains ours. It is our
decision to obey a command, whether to accept an authority. 42
Hence we saw that both for Popper and Kant, the ultimate responsibility is completely on the individual. Kant saw man not as means, but as ends, as rationally
responsible for his actions, free by his will to consider the human dignity of each
person. It is not our instincts what makes us free, but the moral law of reason. It is
the autonomy of man’s pure practical reason that makes him free. Popper inherited
this Kantian ethical individualism.
The public use of reason
In his lecture What is Enlightenment?, Kant acknowledges man’s difficulty to throw
off the yoke of immaturity, due to immaturity having become a kind of “second nature”
of man. The philosopher acknowledged that few succeeded individually. He believed
that only a public can enlighten itself. This is how he explains it: “a few […] after having
themselves thrown off the yoke of immaturity, will spread the spirit of a rational appreciation for both their own worth and for each person’s calling to think for himself”.
41 Id., ibid. pp. 170-171.
42 Id., ibid. p. 171.
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The public use of reason is ardently defended by Popper, but it seems he gives
greater emphasis to the second stage of the process, which is self-emancipation of
man through knowledge. To explain what self-emancipation through knowledge
means, Popper makes use of another Kantian concept: that of pluralism.
Kant thus explains pluralism: “The opposite of egoism can only be pluralism,
that is, the way of thinking in which one is not concerned with oneself as the whole
world, but rather regards and conducts oneself as a mere citizen of the world”.43
Popper, on his turn, states that self-criticism and self-emancipation are possible only
in a pluralism atmosphere, that is, in an open society that tolerates our error and
our many hits. This concept of pluralism, as Popper uses it, is better explained in the
lecture What does the West believe in?, where he says that
It is not the unity of an idea, but the diversity of our many ideas, of which the West may be
proud: the pluralism of its ideas. To our question ‘What does the West believe in?’ we can
now find a first and preliminary answer. For we can say proudly that we in the West believe
in many different things, in much that is true and in much that is false; in good things and in
bad things. 44
Thus, this public use of reason demands freedom as its necessary condition. Its
practice already presupposes freedom.
Freedom
Freedom is essential to the Kantian ethics; it is ration essendi, the reason for being of
the whole of the moral world. Since moral consists in acting according to the categorical imperative, despite contingent reasons, it is necessary that the human being is free
and subtracted from the law of causality that rules the world of nature.
For Kant, freedom is not an original thing, but something conquered through continual fight against the determinism of nature, and never completely attained. The
progressive development in direction of the ideal of freedom cannot be separated
from the complex of impulses linked to the natural determinism of the phenomenic
world. It is solely in society, that is, in the unity of human beings that govern their
own freedom in conformity with the law, that the inferior impulses can be subordinated to the full development of freedom and, thus, of the true humanity.
Once again, Popper follows Kant; but we must draw attention to what he called
the “paradox of freedom”.45
The so-called paradox of freedom is the argument that freedom in the sense of absence of any
constraining control must lead to very great restraint, since it makes the bully free to enslave the
meek.46
43 Kant, I. Antropologia de um ponto de vista pragmático. São Paulo, Iluminuras, 2006. p. 30.
[Anthropology from a pragmatic point of view. Carbondale, Southern Illinois Press, 1996.]
44 Popper, K. Em busca de um mundo melhor, cit., p. 273. [In search of a better world, cit.]
45 See the similarity between the Popperian paradox of freedom and Kant’s definition of civil
legislation in his Antropologia de um ponto de vista pragmático, cit., p. 224 [Anthropology from
a pragmatic point of view, cit.]. Popper acknowledges his dependency on Kant in his seminar “On
freedom”, given in 1958 (Popper, K. A vida é aprendizagem. Lisboa, Edições 70, 2001. p. 123 [All
life is problem solving. London, Routledge, 2001.])
46 Cf. Popper, K. A sociedade aberta e seus inimigos, cit., p. 289. [Open society and its enemies,
cit.]
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The basic principles of the Popperian ethics
The principles that found the moral demands of critical dualism for a humanitarian and equalitarian ethics, deriving from the Greek rationalist tradition, are the
following:47
• the principle of tolerance;
•
the acknowledgement that all moral urgency is based in the urgency of suffering
or pain;
•
The fight against tyranny.
The principle of tolerance
Popper elaborated a theory of tolerance that is closely connected to its theory of
rationalism. His theory of tolerance, it seems, is better evidenced in a lecture (What
does the West believe in?48), delivered in Zurich in 1958.
In that lecture, Popper explained what he understood by a rationalist person:
A rationalist is by no means what our antirationalist opponents try to make us believe, a person
who would like to be a purely rational being and turn others into purely rational beings. That
would be most irrational. Any reasonable person, and therefore, I hope, any rationalist, knows
quite well that reason plays a very modest role in human life. It is the role of critical consideration,
of critical discussion.49
After explaining how he understands rationalism, Popper speaks of religious tolerance, stating that tolerance does not consist in only accepting the different; it happens when all the different religiosities and beliefs’ express their respective contents
with the freedom. In a more theological language, Popper is not interested in an inter-religious dialogue, but in an inter-religious debate. Such “debate” would hardly
be just to decide doctrinal divergences. The “debate’s” main objective would be to
solve problems of the human being and of mankind in general.
In his Open society and its enemies, Popper calls this the “paradox of tolerance”,
that can be thus expressed:
Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance
even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the
onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them 50
The Popperian principle of tolerance can be better understood through a concrete case happened in our days. Recently, a report published in magazine Época,51
entitled “The price of freedom: Islamic radicals abuse British hospitality to attack.
Multiculturalism is in debate, but it is yet the best antidote to terror”, begins like
this:
Open society” is a precious idea of the United Kingdom. In the 20th Century, it became one of
the master ideas of the political debate thanks to the work of two Austrian thinkers, philosopher
47 There are several other principles in the Popperian ethics ― for instance, that of the equalitarian
justice (cf. A sociedade aberta e seus inimigos, cit., p. 109 [Open society and its enemies, cit.]),
but this paper would be extremely long if it dealt with all of them.
48 Popper, K. Em busca de um mundo melhor, cit., pp. 262-288. [In search of a better world, cit.]
49 Id., ibid. p. 263.
50 Popper, K. Apud Magee, B. As idéias de Popper. São Paulo, Cultrix-Edusp, 1974. p. 84. [Popper a
modern master. Harper Trade, 1985.]
51 July 9, 2007.
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Karl Popper and economist Friedrich Hayek, who worked in London. Two exiles welcomed by
the London School of Economics when they fled from Nazism. In the United Kingdom, that
centralized the resistance to the Nazi expansion in Europe, Pooper and Hayek helped the world
to understand and criticise totalitarians of all ideological colours.52
The report approaches two attempts of assault in July 2007 in London and Glasgow. The perpetrators were arrested before making the assaults. It was found that
they were beneficiaries of a program that welcomes foreigners with good academic
education, specially in the health field. The episode brought back the debate on the
openness of the London society. Is it not too open? Or, in other words, too tolerant?
These were the questions raised in the report.
For all that we saw from the Popperian ethics till this moment, there is no problem in having an open society and an intense combat of the open society’s enemies,
in this specific case, the Islamics. As we saw, Popper called this the “paradox of
tolerance”.
Hence, the report’s writer does not show a deep knowledge of Karl Popper’s moral and political philosophy, or he would not have tried to draw such a contrast.
Popper would never have stood against the repression to the tolerant, but – I
emphasize – to the intolerant. Any action against the intolerant that reaches the
tolerant is not a viable action. The fundamental rights of the tolerant cannot be suppressed under the excuse of combating the intolerant, as we saw, for example, in
the USA.53 That would be intolerance to Popper.
The supression of suffering and pain
Popper proposed the replacement of the utilitarian formula “let us aspire to the
greatest amount of happiness to the largest number of people” – or more synthetically, “the maximum happiness” – by the formula “the least amount of pain possible
for all” – or, in sum, “the minimum pain”.
Popper believes such a simple formula can become one of the public policy’s
basic principles. As he explains, the principle of “maximum happiness” seems to
tend to produce benevolent dictatorships. Moreover, from the moral point of view,
we cannot deal symmetrically with pain and happiness. That is, to promote happiness is, in any case, less urgent than to help those who suffer and try to prevent
their pain.
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. That is, in more practical terms: we must fight directly for the elimination of poverty – for
example, guaranteeing that all have a minimum revenue; fighting disease by building hospitals
and medical schools; fighting illiteracy as we fight criminality. But all this by direct means. Chose
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.54
This moral principle of Popper goes against any kind of utopia. As he says in his
Conjectures:
52 Magazine Época, n. 477, p. 114.
53 In magazine Época, n. 487, p. 35, section “Dois pontos” [“Colon”] philosopher Marcos Nobre
says about the restriction of rights in the world following the September 11 event: “To let go of
rights on behalf of safety is a sure way to let go of further rights”. Here, it seems, we clearly see
Popper’s though, even if unconsciously.
54 Popper, K. Conjecturas e refutações. Brasília, Editora Universidade de Brasília, 1980. pp. 392s.
[Conjectures and refutations. London, Routledge, 2002.]
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14
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.55
The fight against tyranny
This principle consists in stating that we must not be passive before tyranny. We
must fight it, if necessary, by making what Popper called, in a 1992 interview, “wars
for peace”.56
We must not let go of our tradition of liberty, even if we have to fight for it. As
Popper says, “it was never possible to defend liberty without taking risks”.57
According to Popper, this tradition of peace and freedom is inherent to the Western culture and we are willing to make sacrifices for both of them. By speaking of
peace and freedom I am not saying democracy is the only kind of government possible, however I recall a saying by Winston Churchill: “Democracy is the worst form
of government except for all those others that have been tried”. And Churchill can
be taken as the greatest symbol of fight against tyranny we had recently, for he did
not yield to Hitler, even when he was in a desperate position.
I agree with Popper when he says that
Our first objective today must be peace. It is very hard to achieve in a world such as ours, where Saddam
Hussein and other dictators like him exist. We should not shrink from waging war for peace. In present
conditions that is unavoidable. It is sad, but we have to do it if we want to save our world.58
Conclusion
There are many other important points in Karl Popper’s ethical and political
thought, such as his conception of democracy, sovereignty, public opinion, partisan pluralism, etc. Nevertheless, that would make this paper too big, wearying the
reader.
The Popperian ethics and politics deserve to be reviewed today considering the
present context in Latin America, especially after Chavez’s rise to power in Venezuela.
In a Popperian conception, the Chavist regime is not a democratic one, for he
is trying to avoid the periodical replacement of the Head of Government and suppressing disagreeing voices, as Denis Lerrer Rosenfeld well showed in journal O
Globo, on November 26, 2007.59
As se saw, the Popperian critical dualism’s moral principles cannot be inferred
from nature, that is, norms cannot derive from fact. Hence, to Popper, ethics is not
a science and has no rational scientific basis, even though we are capable of rationally defending it.
We have also seen that his humanitarian and equalitarian ethics, inherited from
Christianity and Kant, prizes three fundamental moral principles: tolerance, the
suppression of pain, and the fight of tyranny.
55 Id., ibid. p. 393.
56 Id. A vida é aprendizagem, cit., pp. 157-169. [All life is problem solving. London, Routledge,
2001.]
57 Id. Em busca de um mundo melhor, cit., p. 277. [In search of a better world, cit.]
58 Id. A vida é aprendizagem, cit., p. 161. [All life is problem solving. London, Routledge, 2001.]
59 A nova SS, [The new SS] p. 7.
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Popper is optimistic about our world. He acknowledges we have largely, if not
entirely, eliminated the most serious evils that have afflicted the human being until
now. But he still makes a list of the major problems that could be solved, or lessened, through social cooperation. They are:
• poverty;
•
unemployment and some kinds of social insecurity;
•
illness and pain;
•
penal cruelty;
•
slavery and other forms of servitude;
•
racial and religious discrimination;
•
the lack of educational opportunities;
•
the rigidity of class distinctions;
•
war.
I conclude this paper by quoting Hubert Kiesewetter: “Popper’s ethical appeal to
our notion of responsibility for the future is this: do whatever is within your reach to
reduce violence, crime and cruelty, for these are the greatest evils of our time”.60
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Ciberteologia - Journal of Theology & Culture – Year II, n. 17
17
Ideology
Society
Written by: Maurice Cranston
•
©2016 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
Ideology, a form of social or political philosophy in which practical elements are as prominent as
theoretical ones. It is a system of ideas that aspires both to explain the world and to change it.
This article describes the nature, history, and significance of ideologies in terms of the
philosophical, political, and international contexts in which they have arisen. Particular
categories of ideology are discussed in the articles socialism, communism, anarchism, fascism,
nationalism, liberalism, and conservatism.
•
Origins and characteristics of ideology
The word first made its appearance in French as idéologie at the time of the French Revolution,
when it was introduced by a philosopher, A.-L.-C. Destutt de Tracy, as a short name for what he
called his “science of ideas,” which he claimed to have adapted from the epistemology of the
philosophers John Locke and Étienne Bonnot de Condillac, for whom all human knowledge was
knowledge of ideas. The fact is, however, that he owed rather more to the English philosopher
Francis Bacon, whom he revered no less than did the earlier French philosophers of the
Enlightenment. It was Bacon who had proclaimed that the destiny of science was not only to
enlarge human knowledge but also to “improve the life of men on earth,” and it was this same
union of the programmatic with the intellectual that distinguished Destutt de Tracy’s idéologie
from those theories, systems, or philosophies that were essentially explanatory. The science of
ideas was a science with a mission: it aimed at serving people, even saving them, by ridding their
minds of prejudice and preparing them for the sovereignty of reason.
Destutt de Tracy and his fellow idéologues devised a system of national education that they
believed would transform France into a rational and scientific society. Their teaching combined a
fervent belief in individual liberty with an elaborate program of state planning, and for a short
time under the Directory (1795–99) it became the official doctrine of the French Republic.
Napoleon at first supported Destutt de Tracy and his friends, but he soon turned against them,
and in December 1812 he even went so far as to attribute blame for France’s military defeats to
the influence of the idéologues, of whom he spoke with scorn.
Thus ideology has been from its inception a word with a marked emotive content, though Destutt
de Tracy presumably had intended it to be a dry, technical term. Such was his own passionate
attachment to the science of ideas, and such was the high moral worth and purpose he assigned to
it, that the word idéologie was bound to possess for him a strongly laudatory character. And
equally, when Napoleon linked the name of idéologie with what he had come to regard as the
most detestable elements in Revolutionary thought, he invested the same word with all of his
feelings of disapprobation and mistrust. Ideology was, from this time on, to play this double role
of a term both laudatory and abusive not only in French but also in German, English, Italian, and
all the other languages of the world into which it was either translated or transliterated.
Some historians of philosophy have called the 19th century the age of ideology, not because the
word itself was then so widely used, but because so much of the thought of the time can be
distinguished from that prevailing in the previous centuries by features that would now be called
ideological. Even so, there is a limit to the extent to which one can speak today of an agreed use
of the word. The subject of ideology is a controversial one, and it is arguable that at least some
part of this controversy derives from disagreement as to the definition of the word ideology. One
can, however, discern both a strict and a loose way of using it. In the loose sense of the word,
ideology may mean any kind of action-oriented theory or any attempt to approach politics in the
light of a system of ideas. Ideology in the stricter sense stays fairly close to Destutt de Tracy’s
original conception and may be identified by five characteristics: (1) it contains an explanatory
theory of a more or less comprehensive kind about human experience and the external world; (2)
it sets out a program, in generalized and abstract terms, of social and political organization; (3) it
conceives the realization of this program as entailing a struggle; (4) it seeks not merely to
persuade but to recruit loyal adherents, demanding what is sometimes called commitment; (5) it
addresses a wide public but may tend to confer some special role of leadership on intellectuals.
In this article the noun ideology is used only in its strict sense; the adjective ideological is used to
refer to ideology as broadly defined.
On the basis of the five features above, then, one can recognize as ideologies systems as diverse
as Destutt de Tracy’s own science of ideas, the positivism of the French philosopher Auguste
Comte, communism and several other types of socialism, fascism, Nazism, and certain kinds of
nationalism. That all these “-isms” belong to the 19th or 20th century may suggest that
ideologies are no older than the word itself—that they belong essentially to a period in which
secular belief increasingly replaced traditional religious faith.
Seventeenth-century England occupies an important place in the history of ideology. Although
there were then no fully fledged ideologies in the strict sense of the term, political theory, like
politics itself, began to acquire certain ideological characteristics. The swift movement of
revolutionary forces throughout the 17th century created a demand for theories to explain and
justify the radical action that was often taken. Locke’s Two Treatises of Government (1690) is an
outstanding example of literature written to justify individual rights against absolutism. This
growth of abstract theory in the 17th century, this increasing tendency to construct systems and
discuss politics in terms of principles, marks the emergence of the ideological style. In political
conversation generally it was accompanied by a growing use of concepts such as right and
liberty—ideals in terms of which actual policies were judged.
Hegel and Marx
Although the word ideology in the sense derived from Destutt de
Tracy’s understanding has passed into modern usage, it is important to notice the particular sense
that ideology is given in Hegelian and Marxist philosophy, where it is used in a pejorative way.
Ideology there becomes a word for what these philosophers also call “false consciousness.”
G.W.F. Hegel argued that people were instruments of history; they enacted roles that were
assigned to them by forces they did not understand; the meaning of history was hidden from
them. Only the philosopher could expect to understand things as they were. This Hegelian
enterprise of interpreting reality and reconciling the world to itself was condemned by certain
critics as an attempt to provide an ideology of the status quo, in that if individuals were indeed
mere ciphers whose actions were determined by external forces, then there was little point in
trying to change or improve political and other circumstances. This is a criticism Karl Marx took
up, and it is the argument he developed in Die deutsche Ideologie (written 1845–46, published
1932; The German Ideology) and other earlier writings. Ideology in this sense is a set of beliefs
with which people deceive themselves; it is theory that expresses what they are led to think, as
opposed to that which is true; it is false consciousness.
Marx, however, was not consistent in his
use of the word ideology, for he did not always use the term pejoratively, and some of his
references to it clearly imply the possibility of an ideology being true. Twentieth-century
Marxists, who frequently discarded the pejorative sense of ideology altogether, were content to
speak of Marxism as being itself an ideology. In certain communist countries, “ideological
institutes” were established, and party philosophers were commonly spoken of as party
ideologists. Marxism is an excellent example, a paradigm, of an ideology.
The political context
Ideology, rationalism, and romanticism
If some theorists emphasize the kinship between ideology and various forms of religious
enthusiasm, others stress the connection between ideology and what they call rationalism, or the
attempt to understand politics in terms of abstract ideas rather than of lived experience. Like
Napoleon, who held that ideology is par excellence the work of intellectuals, some theorists are
suspicious of those who think they know about politics because they have read many books; they
believe that politics can be learned only by an apprenticeship to politics itself.
Such people are not unsympathetic to political theories, such as Locke’s, but they argue that their
value resides in the facts that are derived from experience. Michael Oakeshott in England
described Locke’s theory of political liberty as an “abridgment” of the Englishman’s traditional
understanding of liberty and suggested that once such a conception is uprooted from the tradition
that has given it meaning it becomes a rationalistic doctrine or metaphysical abstraction, like
those liberties contained in the Declaration of the Rights of Man, which were so much talked
about after the French Revolution but rarely actually enjoyed, in France or elsewhere.
Whereas Oakeshott saw ideology as a form of rationalism, Edward Shils, a U.S. political
scientist, saw it more as a product of, among other things, romanticism with an extremist
character. His argument was that romanticism has fed into and swelled the seas of ideological
politics by its cult of the ideal and by its scorn for the actual, especially its scorn for what is
mediated by calculation and compromise. Since civil politics demands both compromise and
contrivance and calls for a prudent self-restraint and responsible caution, he suggested that civil
politics is bound to be repugnant to romanticism. Hence Shils concluded that the romantic spirit
is naturally driven toward ideological politics.
Ideology and terror
The “total” character of ideology, its extremism
and violence, have been analyzed by other critics, among whom the French philosopher-writer
Albert Camus and the Austrian-born British philosopher Sir Karl Popper merit particular
attention. Beginning as an existentialist who subscribed to the view that “the universe is absurd,”
Camus passed to a personal affirmation of justice and human decency as compelling values to be
realized in conduct. An Algerian by birth, Camus also appealed to what he believed to be the
“Mediterranean” tradition of moderation and human warmth and joy in living as opposed to the
“northern” Germanic tradition of fanatical, puritan devotion to metaphysical abstractions. In his
book L’Homme révolté (1951; The Rebel), he argued that the true rebel is not the person who
conforms to the orthodoxy of some revolutionary ideology but a person who could say “no” to
injustice. He suggested that the true rebel would prefer the politics of reform, such as that of
modern trade-union socialism, to the totalitarian politics of Marxism or similar movements. The
systematic violence of ideology—the crimes de logique that were committed in its name—
appeared to Camus to be wholly unjustifiable. Hating cruelty, he believed that the rise of
ideology in the modern world had added enormously to human suffering. Though he was willing
to admit that the ultimate aim of most ideologies was to diminish human suffering, he argued
that good ends did not authorize the use of evil means.
A somewhat similar plea for what he called “piecemeal social engineering” was put forward by
Popper, who argued that ideology rests on a logical mistake: namely the notion that history can
be transformed into science. In Logik der Forschung (1934; The Logic of Scientific Discovery),
Popper suggested that the true method of science was not one of observation, hypothesis, and
confirmation but one of conjecture and experiment, in which the concept of falsification played a
crucial role. By this concept he meant that in science there is a continuing process of trial and
error; conjectures are put to the test of experiment, and those that are not falsified are
provisionally accepted; thus there is no definitive knowledge but only provisional knowledge
that is constantly being corrected. Popper saw in the enterprise of ideology an attempt to find
certainty in history and to produce predictions on the model of what were supposed to be
scientific predictions. Ideologists, he argued, because they have a false notion of what science is,
can produce only prophecies, which are quite distinct from scientific predictions and which have
no scientific validity whatever. Though Popper was well disposed toward the idea of a
“scientific” approach to politics and ethics, he suggested that a full awareness of the importance
of trial and error in science would prompt one to look for similar forms of “negative judgment”
elsewhere.
By no means are all ideologists explicit champions of violence, but it is characteristic of ideology
both to exalt action and to regard action in terms of a military analogy. Some observers have
pointed out that one has only to consider the prose style of the founders of most ideologies to be
struck by the military and warlike language that they habitually use, including words like
struggle, resist, march, victory, and overcome; the literature of ideology is replete with martial
expressions. In such a view, commitment to an ideology becomes a form of enlistment so that to
become the adherent of an ideology is to become a combatant or partisan.
In the years that followed World War II, a number of ideological writers went beyond the mere
use of military language and made frank avowals of their desire for violence—not that it was a
new thing to praise violence. The French political philosopher Georges Sorel, for example, had
done so before World War I in his book Réflexions sur la violence (1908; Reflections on
Violence). Sorel was usually regarded as being more a fascist than a socialist. He also used the
word violence in his own special way; by violence Sorel meant passion, not the throwing of
bombs and the burning of buildings.
Violence found eloquent champions in several black militant writers of the 1960s, notably the
Martinican theorist Frantz Fanon. Moreover, several of the French philosopher Jean-Paul
Sartre’s dramatic writings turn on the theme that “dirty hands” are necessary in politics and that a
person with so-called bourgeois inhibitions about bloodshed cannot usefully serve a
revolutionary cause. Sartre’s attachment to the ideal of revolution tended to increase as he grew
older, and in some of his later writings he suggested that violence might even be a good thing in
itself.
In considering Sartre’s views on the subject of ideology it must be noted that Sartre sometimes
used the word ideology in a sense peculiarly his own. In an early section of his Critique de la
raison dialectique (1960; Critique of Dialectical Reason), Sartre drew a distinction between
philosophies and ideologies in which he reserved the term philosophy for those major systems of
thought, such as the rationalism of Descartes or the idealism of Hegel, which dominate people’s
minds at a certain moment in history. He defined an ideology as a minor system of ideas, living
on the margin of the genuine philosophy and exploiting the domain of the greater system. What
Sartre proposed in this work was a revitalization and modernization of the “major philosophy” of
Marxism through the integration of elements drawn from the “ideology,” or minor system, of
existentialism. What emerged from the book was a theory in which the existentialist elements are
more conspicuous than the Marxist.
Ideology and pragmatism
A distinction is often drawn between the ideological and the pragmatic approach to politics, the
latter being understood as the approach that treats particular issues and problems purely on their
merits and does not attempt to apply doctrinal, preconceived remedies. Theorists have debated
whether or not politics has become less ideological and whether a pragmatic approach can be
shown to be better than an ideological one.
On the first question, there seemed to be good reason for thinking that after the death of Stalin
and the repudiation of Stalinism by the Communist Party, the Soviet Union, at least, was
becoming more interested in the “pragmatic” concerns of national security and the balance of
power and less interested in the ideological aim of fostering universal communism. This in turn
seemed to many to have resulted—in both the United States and the Soviet Union—in a shift
toward a pragmatic policy of coexistence and a peaceful division of spheres of influence. There
were indications in many countries that the old antagonisms between capitalist and socialist
ideologies were giving way to a search for techniques for making a mixed economy work more
effectively for the good of all.
But while many observers believed that there was much evidence of a decline of ideology in the
latter 1950s, others believed that there were equally manifest signs in the following decade of a
revival of ideology, if not within the major political parties, then at least among the public
generally. Throughout the world various left-wing movements emerged to challenge the whole
ethos on which pragmatic politics was based. Not all these ideologies were coherent, and none
possessed the elaborate intellectual structure of the 19th-century ideologies; but together they
served to demonstrate that the end of ideology was not yet at hand.
As suggested earlier, certain controversies about ideology have to some extent been rooted in the
ambiguity of the word itself, and this is perhaps especially relevant to the confrontation between
ideology and pragmatism, since the word pragmatism raises problems no less intractable than
those involved in connection with the word ideology. In the senses outlined at the beginning of
this article, ideology is manifestly not the only alternative to pragmatism in politics, and to reject
ideology would not necessarily be to adopt pragmatism. Ordinary language does not yet yield as
many words as political science needs to clarify the question, and it becomes necessary to
introduce such expressions as belief system, or to name the relevant distinctions, to further the
analysis.
Almost any approach to politics constitutes a belief system of one kind or another. Some such
belief systems are more structured, more ordered, and generally systematic than others. Though
an ideology is a type of belief system, not all belief systems are ideologies. One person’s belief
system may consist of a congeries of ill-assorted prejudices and inarticulate assumptions.
Another’s may be the result of deep reflection and careful study. It is sometimes felt to be
convenient to speak of a belief system of this latter type as a philosophy or, better, to distinguish
it from philosophy in the technical or academic sense, as a Weltanschauung (literally, a “view of
the world”).
The confrontation between ideology and pragmatism may be more instructive if it is translated
into a distinction between the ideological and the pragmatic, taking these two adjectives as
extremes on a sliding scale. From this perspective, it becomes possible to speak of differences of
degree, to speak of an approach to politics as being more or less ideological, more or less
pragmatic. At the same time it becomes possible to speak of a belief system such as liberalism as
lending itself to a variety of forms, tending at the one extreme toward the ideological, and at the
other toward the pragmatic.
Ideology of the Cold War
What came to be called the Cold War in the 1950s must be understood, to a large extent, as an
ideological confrontation, and, whereas communism was manifestly an ideology, the
“noncommunism,” or even the “anticommunism,” of the West was negatively ideological. To
oppose one ideology was not necessarily to subscribe to another, although there was a strong
body of opinion in the West that felt that the free world needed a coherent ideology if it was to
successfully resist an opposing ideology.
The connection between international wars and ideology can be better expressed in terms of a
difference of degree rather than of kind: some wars are more ideological than others, although
there is no clear boundary between an ideological and nonideological war. An analogy with the
religious wars of the past is evident, and there is indeed some historical continuity between the
two types of war. The Christian Crusades against the Turks and the wars between Catholics and
Protestants in early modern Europe have much in common with the ideological conflicts of the
20th century. Religious wars are often communal wars, as witness those between Hindus and
Muslims in India, but an “ideological” element of a kind can be discovered in many religious
wars, even those narrated in the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament), in which the people of Israel are
described as fighting for the cause of righteousness—fighting, in other words, for a universal
abstraction as distinct from a local and practical aim. In the past this “ideological” element has in
the main been subsidiary. What is characteristic of the modern period is that the ideological
element became increasingly dominant, first in the religious wars (and the related diplomacy)
that followed the Reformation and then in the political wars and diplomacy of the 20th century.
IDEOLOGY
Ideology has shaped the very sofa on which I sit.
Mason Cooley
The shortest dictionary definition of ideology has to be “visionary theorizing”.
Given, however, that “theory” is usually taken to mean something like “constructing
rational models of an observed phenomenon” – how can this exercise be, at the
same time, visionary?
Therein, of course, is the rub. Ideology is, on the one hand, a theoretical
ordering of observed reality; but it is, on the other, an active (indeed – activist)
ordering. It tells us what the world is like, but it also takes sides, by telling us what
is wrong with the world and how to fix it. Such an explanation is “visionary” by
virtue of the simple fact that it is situated in the future – the envisaged time when
the wrongs of the world will be put right.
But ideology is not simply fiction or wishful thinking. It must be rooted in
observable reality and this is hinted by the suffix –logy at the end, derived from the
Greek logos, meaning (among other things) “reason”.
This active, future-oriented nature of the concept is behind the classic
dictionary definition of ideology as “a set of beliefs, especially the political beliefs on
which people, parties, or countries base their actions”. Political means “things
relating to the wellbeing of the polis” (i.e. the political community); and so an
expanded definition of ideology would read something like: “a set of explanations
which outline a better future for people, organized as a political community”.
Michael Freeden, the noted student of ideology, reminds us: “We produce,
disseminate, and consume ideologies all our lives, whether we are aware of it or
not.” There is a reason for this: “Ideologies… map the political and social worlds for
us. We simply cannot do without them because we cannot act without making
sense of the worlds we inhabit.”
The term “ideology” was coined by a French Enlightenment aristocrat called
Antoine Louis Claude Destutt, comte de Tracy (1754-1836). He advocated
“ideology” as a science, which could not only explain the world, but also point to its
shortcomings and ways to remedy them, i.e. – could change the world.
Destutt’s investigation of ideology led him to conclude that all political
doctrine should be judged by reason and reason alone; that a republican form of
government was preferable to a monarchy; and that the state should not interfere
in the economy. These conclusions got him in trouble with Napoleon, who as
Emperor could not afford to agree with any of them. So the Emperor entered the
philosophical battle field and, rather successfully, managed to turn “ideology” into a
term of abuse.
Karl Marx (1818-1883) followed Napoleon by describing Destutt as a “fishblooded bourgeois doctrinaire”, but his irritation with ideology stemmed from
entirely different grounds. Together with his partner Friedrich Engels (1820-1895),
Marx was convinced that almost everything people knew about the world was false
– an “ideology” imposed on them by a ruling class that was interested, not in
objective knowledge, but in keeping the workers, exploited by that class, from
asking uncomfortable questions.
"The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas,” wrote Marx
and Engels. “The class which has the means of material production at its disposal,
has control at the same time over the means of mental production."
The outcome, for the working people, was that they looked at the world
through a “false consciousness”. And it fell to people like Marx and Engels (who
called themselves “Communists”) to help the working people see through the
illusions of ideology; and recognize that their interest lies in overthrowing the ruling
class, abolishing private property and constructing a society, where nobody rules
anybody else and everything is everybody’s.
Through the second half of the 19th century, “ideology” continued to labour
under the label “distorted view of reality”. Political thinkers and parties avoided
using the word and, while in reality being heavily ideological, preferred to use other
words to denote their packages of ideas, such as “programme”, “manifesto”,
“platform” and even “philosophy”.
Things changed after the First World War. That war was such a catastrophe
for all involved that people came to the conclusion that there was something very
wrong with the way the world’s politics were constructed. The search for an answer
to questions, such as “What went wrong?” and “How to fix it?” produced a new age
of ideology. The new political movements and parties shrugged off the old stigma
on ideology as “false consciousness” and began claiming that an ideology (theirs, of
course) could be a “correct” or even a “scientific” description of the world.
In Italy, for Mussolini’s Fascists claimed that what was wrong was the
existence of political parties, who divided the nation and weakened its state. The
Fascists produced an ideology, which placed the State above everything else:
“The keystone of the Fascist doctrine is its conception of the State, of its
essence, its functions, and its aims. For Fascism the State is absolute, individuals
and groups relative HYPERLINK
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In that State, people are represented – not via competing political parties,
but via “corporations” (professional guilds). Employers are represented as
employers, workers – as workers, farmers – as farmers and so on. On top of all this
stands the one Party that embodies the unity of the State.
In Soviet Russia, Stalin’s Communists believed that what was wrong with the
world was the existence of private property and the division of society into two
classes: those who had private property; and those who did not (and were
therefore forced to work for those who did). The ruling class was abolished, as was
private property, along with the entire political edifice of “capitalist democracy”,
such as independent media, rule of law, human rights and political parties. This
regime was called “dictatorship of the proletariat” and was described, by Stalin
himself, as “the tightest and mightiest form of state authority that has ever existed
in history.”
Based on this ideology, the Communists evolved a state structure similar to
that of the Fascists. There being no parties, people were to be represented through
their workplace organizations, called “Soviets”, who sent representatives to the
“Grand Soviet” sitting in the capital city. On top of this construction was placed the
one Party, which embodied the interests of the working people.
In Germany, Hitler’s Nazis (National Socialists) believed that what was wrong
with the world was that its “races” were not properly situated one towards the
other. The Nazis believed that there were superior and inferior races; and that the
superior ones were by right the rulers of the inferior. But under the rule of
democracy, races were all jumbled up together, leading to chaos and degradation.
The Germans, thought the Nazis, were a superior “Aryan” race; and were,
therefore, rightfully obliged to dominate inferior races, such as Jews and Slavs. But,
under democracy, the German “race” had been penetrated by Jews and Slavs, who
were degrading the Germans.
Hitler himself wrote:
“All the human culture, all the results of art, science and technology that we
see before us today, are almost exclusively the creative product of the Aryan. This
very fact admits of the not unfounded inference that he alone was the founder of all
higher humanity, therefore representing the prototype of all that we understand by
the word 'man.'”
By definition, therefore, all non-Aryans were not “man”, not truly human or,
in the Nazis’ own word – “untermenschen”, under-human.
What needed to be done, therefore, was to cleanse Germany of inferior
races; and then assert Germany’s right to rule over all countries populated by
inferior races. In order to do this, the united German people needed to be cleansed
from the divisions of democracy and competing political parties, as well as of
independent media and rule of law (because both placed superior and inferior races
on the same footing). On top of this, as with the Fascists and the Communists,
stood the one Party, embodying the historical destiny of the Aryan German “race”.
All of these “scientific” ideologies were extremely war-like and ultimately
produced the Second World War, giving “ideology” a bad name again. Post-war
political parties avoided using this term, returning to words such as “programmes”,
“platforms” and, increasingly, “policies”. In 1960, a celebrated thinker, Daniel Bell
(1919-2011) even published an influential collection of essays, called “The End of
Ideology”.
The non-Stalinist Left, however, focused closely on the term “ideology” in
order to understand what it in fact may mean. Even before the Second World War,
the Italian Communist Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937), languishing in one of
Mussolini’s prisons, came up with a novel concept, overturning Marx’s idea of “false
consciousness”, as well as the newer concepts of “scientific” ideology.
Gramsci came to the conclusion that it was not necessarily the case that the
dominant ideas of a given time were those of the ruling class. It is true, argued
Gramsci, that most of the time they were; but not always and not inevitably. Quite
simply, the dominant ideas of an age represented a hegemony of someone’s ideas.
That “someone” could be the ruling class; but could also not be the ruling class.
Therefore, if one was to struggle against the ruling class, one could first try to
acquire “hegemony” – i.e. to ensure that her ideas were seen as natural and
common-sensical by society; and then attack the privileged groups and classes on
the grounds of common sense.
Ultimately, today’s PR industry is one of the outcomes of this “hegemonic”
approach to ideology.
Without any linkage with Gramsci’s prison writings (which became known
only at the end of the 1960s), a Leftist circle of thinkers known as the “Frankfurt
School” also explored the problematic of ideological hegemony (without calling it
that). These thinkers evolved, by the 1960s, an approach known as “Critical
Theory”, described by one of its authors, Max Horkheimer (1895-1973) as a theory
that is critical to the extent that it seeks “human emancipation from slavery”, acts
as “a liberating influence”, and works “to create a world which satisfies the needs
and powers” of human beings.
Critical theory was in the business of: explaining what is wrong with the
world; identifying the actors to change it; and providing clear norms for criticism
and a strategic framework for social transformation. The ultimate core of the
theory, according to Horkheimer, was that it “has as its object human beings as
producers of their own historical form of life”. Or, as modern social anthropologists
would have it – human beings as “authors” of their own lives, rather than as actors
playing out someone else’s script for their lives.
Critical theory, we see, was a classic piece of “ideology” – an activist
explanation of the world. Together with Gramsci, however, the critical theorists
were convinced that the production of ideology was not inevitably the domain of the
ruling class. Anybody could do it – anybody could join the battle of ideas for the
future of their society.
And, in the 1960s, many people did. In the USA, Critical Theory informed
much of the struggles for civic rights, as well as the various attempts by the hippie
“Movement” to reconstruct America along new lines. In Western Europe, the
student rebellions in France and elsewhere were attacking the powers-that-be from
the position of new ideas of personal liberation. In Czechoslovakia and Poland,
whole nations confronted the dominant Communist ideology and demanded that
they be the authors of their own lives, rather than playing out scripts written in the
Kremlin.
Suddenly, everyone was in the business of trying to attain “ideological
hegemony” – something which set the stage for the gradual return of “ideology’ to
the world of politics and government.
In the Communist East of Europe, the official package of ideas, underpinned
by the totalitarian dictatorships, had lost its hegemony by the beginning of the
1980s. In spite of all efforts on the part of the dictators, by that time it had become
“common sense” that communism was a failure; and had no future. “Hegemony”
had been attained by those who were critical of the communist system, although
they had no access to the media and no right to form political parties or
movements. By the time Communism was openly challenged, in the destruction of
the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989, there was nobody left who believed in the
system enough to defend it.
This situation immediately led to another burst of “end-of-ideology” thinking.
Weeks before the fall of the Wall, the American thinker Francis Fukuyama (b. 1952)
attained instant fame when he published an essay titled “The End of History”. In it,
he argued that all arguments as to the best way to organize human life – all
ideology and, indeed, all “history” – ended with the demise of the Communist
ideology. Liberal democracy and the market economy would, from here on, be
unchallenged. We are witnesses, wrote Fukuyama, to “the end point of mankind's
ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the
final form of human government.”
To his credit, he did foresee that some form of militant Islam may, at some
point in the future, rise to challenge this new hegemony; but he did not really
believe it possible.
For a while, the world behaved as if, indeed, all ideological arguments were,
once and for all, over. In politics, Left and Right agreed on more or less the same
policies and packages of ideas, structured around the concepts dominant at the
moment of the fall of the Wall – i.e. concepts arising out of a Right-Conservative
interpretation of the world, as best formulated by the then British Prime Minister
Margaret Thatcher and American President Ronald Reagan.
Everyone joined in the celebration of the death of ideology, while
unconsciously producing new ideologies. One example is the European Union’s
ambition for an “ever-closer union”, published in 2000. This was a typical
ideological exercise, outlining what was wrong with the current situation (not
enough coordination between the policies of member states) and providing a
solution (ever-closer union). Another example were the economic policies,
dominant from the end of the 1990s in Europe and the USA. These policies believed
that what was wrong with the economy was too much state interference; and that
what needed to be done was – to withdraw the state from the economy
(“deregulation”).
“Ideology”, nevertheless, continued to be a dirty word in politics, replaced
increasingly by “pragmatism”: the idea that there was nothing basically wrong in
the world and that government and politics were, therefore, a matter of fixing
various problems arising.
This way of thinking continued until the attacks, mounted on the World Trade
Center in New York on 11 September 2001, signaled that there was, indeed, an
Islamist challenge to the then current hegemony. By 2008, when policies fuelled by
the celebration of the free market produced the largest-ever world financial crisis,
few believed that ideology was truly dead. To compound matters, a few years later
Russia declared itself in ideological opposition to liberal democracy and in 2013
invaded, by force of arms, a neighbouring country, Ukraine, which had declared its
allegiance to liberal democracy. A handful of countries, run by dictators, followed
Russia’s lead and also declared themselves free of the “liberal-democratic
ideology”.
By 2015, there was much that was obviously wrong with the world; and
challenges to the hegemony of liberal democracy and market economy were
multiplying around the globe. As people today search for answers to the usual
questions in such situations – “What went wrong?; “How to fix it?” – ideology is
back (if it ever truly went away).
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