The Significance And Limitation Of Critical Rationalism

There are three famous liberal political thinkers in the last century, namely Hayek, Berlin and Popper. Compared with the other two, Popper is primarily a scientific philosopher, and his philosophy is considered as the peculiar panoramic system after Hegel, which ranges from scientific philosophy, historical philosophy, social and political philosophy, ethics to cosmology.Popper is the first contemporary liberal political thinker being introduced into China, but these years, the study of Popper is not so fashionable, and a systematic study of his political thought is still in want. On the basis of summarizing and using other people's study for conference, this thesis is trying to make a new exploration of the political thought of Popper, and to build a preliminary research-framework of Popper's political thought.Firstly, the thesis discusses his scientific philosophy, which I consider as the epistemological footstone of his political thought. The discussion focuses on his falsificationism, fallibilism, his theory of the growth of knowledge (especially the method of trial and error) , and his view of truth.The second and pivotal part of the thesis is Popper's political thought, which contains his anti-historicism, his theory of the open society. Undoubtedly, they are the application of his critical rationalism in the historical and political fields.As we will see in the paper, Popper considers historicism as the remains of the ancient superstition, his criticism can be summed up to three key propositions, namely there is no law in history, history can't be forecasted and there is no meaning in history.Another important issue of Popper's political thought is the theory of the open society. In criticizing the tribalism and the closed society, Popper develops his idea about the dualism of facts and values, and discusses liberty and democracy in a open society, then puts forward his view of a protectioniststate; He refutes the Utopian social engineering, and constructs the road of piecemeal development to the open society.The thesis then investigate the three characters of Popper's political thought, that is, his anti-essentialism, his methodological individualism and his negative utilitarianism, and analyze the inner strains in Popper's political thought.The final part of the thesis differentiates and analyzes the neo-liberal attribute of Popper's political thought, and considers that his historical status lies in the fact that he is the greatest successor of the critical rationalism in the western tradition; then discusses the reasons why his thought is not in fashion today, and tries to reveal the theoretical and practical significance of his thought in modern society.