Abstract

This study is an intellectual biography of Karl Popper, placing his work in the Viennese context, and examining the relationship between his Autobiography and his philosophical and political works. It recovers the cultural, social and political life of interwar Vienna, and traces the intellectual and political formation of Karl Popper. It argues that Popper's works and views have been badly misinterpreted and misunderstood because of the cultural disjunction between the German-Austrian milieu in which they were formed and the Anglo-Saxon world where they became popular after the Second World War. By placing Popper's works in interwar Viennese discourses on the methodology of the sciences, politics, economics and psychology, the study offers a different reading of the works and draws a new portrait of one of the century's foremost philosophers. ;The study is divided into three parts. Part I recovers the fin-de-siecle background to Popper's work, including Jewish life in Vienna, progressive politics, Austrian philosophy and the crisis of modernism. Part II, "From Politics to Science," analyses the formation of Popper's philosophy of science during the interwar years. It traces Popper's intellectual development from his political involvement with Communism and the school-reform movement to his studies in psychology. It explains his major philosophical breakthrough in 1929, which culminated in The Logic of Scientific Discovery . Part III, "From Science to Politics," analyzes the formation of Popper's political philosophy. It argues that the failure of Austrian Socialism, and not the confrontation with Soviet Communism, was the central experience behind Popper's critique of Marxism, and that the Cold War is an inappropriate context for the reading of his political works. By focusing on German and Austrian Methodenstreiten in the social sciences and on debates on socialization and planning in interwar Vienna, Part III creates a new framework for the understanding of The Poverty of Historicism. It then proceeds to discuss The Open Society and Its Enemies in the context of contemporary analyses of Fascism and totalitarianism, and investigates the manner in which Popper's self-understanding and Autobiography illuminate his controversial interpretation of Plato, Socrates and Classical Athens. The study concludes with an evaluation of Popper's contribution to contemporary liberalism