An Analysis Of Dilemmas Of Karl Popper’s Political Philosophy

Karl Popper’s political philosophy is a kind of response to main themes of the age. However, compared with other ideologists in the 20th century, the fate of his theory appeared extraordinary preposterous because of the turbulence of the age and dilemmas of his political philosophy.From the point of methodology, Karl Popper arrived at his conclusion of political philosophy from the use of his epistemology and methodology, which made his arguments and views on political philosophy to be rigorous and novel. But the strongpoint of his theory is the weakpoint too. On the one hand, his criticism of methodological individualism to Mill’s psychologism and methodological holism is not only unsuccessful, but also go astray of metaphysics. On the other hand, the effect of the argument is filled with difficulties due to these facts that applicative scopes of his epistemology and methodology are limited, logical abstract is emphasized and the opposite pattern of thought is applied in the process of argument. In addition, Popper’s paradoxes go into the dilemma of cutting down the "centrism" as well, which eventually avoid logical paradox hardly. Thus, his methodology is nothing more than a poverty of imagination. Theoretically, first of all, in the principle of the minimization of misery as the negative Utilitarianism there are three defects,1) there is no consensus in pain; 2) it is not consistent with equalitarianism; 3) it will cause negative consequences. Moreover, Popper could not solve four problems as following:I.Whose pains will be minimized?Ⅱ.What kind of pains will be minimized?Ⅲ.Can they be minimized? IV. How to realize the minimization of them? Secondly, there are some absurd points and errors in Popper’s arguments to two kinds of social Engineering. On the arguments of opposing the Utopian social Engineering, Popper is biased to combine Historicism, Totalitarian and Science with the Utopian social Engineering. Similarly, there are some problems in his arguments (especially the feasibility and the scientific test) of the piecemeal social Engineering. Most importantly, there are contradictions among opposing the Utopian social Engineering, the piecemeal social Engineering and the Open Society that he advocates. At last, there are some potential defects and frangibility in the Open Society that is the final destination of his political philosophy, which mainly appear as the closeness, authoritativeness and fantasticality of the Open Society.In the thesis I do not intend all-around exposition of Popper’s political philosophy theory, but express my own opinions of the following subjects through analysing the dilemmas of his political philosophy:What kind of dilemmas is there in Popper’s political philosophy? Which value of the dilemmas is there in Popper’s political philosophy? Which influence of the dilemmas on western politics is come into being? Is there necessity and possibility in getting through the dilemmas? At same time, the author further discusses Popper’s characteristics of thoughts, his political ascription and political effects of the dilemmas through the analysis of his political philosophy, and arrives at some relative conclusions.