Abstract
Karl Popper is famous for favoring an open society, one in which the individual is treated as an end in himself and social arrangements are subjected to critical evaluation, which he defends largely by appeal to a Kantian ethic of respecting the dignity of rational beings. In this essay, I consider for the first time what the implications of a characteristically African ethic, instead prescribing respect for our capacity to relate communally, are for how the state should operate in an open society. I argue that while an Afro-communal moral foundation does not prescribe a closed society, it supports an open society politics of a sort different from the one that Popper specifies. For Popper, the state in an open society should improve social arrangements albeit without seeking to promote a particular conception of the good life, should protect rights that merely serve the function of facilitating individual choice, and should employ majoritarian democracy to be able to avoid unwelcome rulers and policies. On all three counts, I show that a relational ethic typical of the African philosophical tradition entails different, intuitively attractive approaches to politics.
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Notes
- 1.
The phrasing is somewhat different in a later essay (Popper 1976a, 78).
- 2.
This distinction is reminiscent of Jürgen Habermas’s (Habermas 1984, 1987) distinction between modern and pre-modern societies, where the former are characterized by rationalization processes, one major form of which is the increased extent to which society (or at least the lifeworld dimension of it) is determined by communicative action.
- 3.
I thus disagree with one commentator who believes that what Popper “needs is some positive account of human nature, which will enable us to see the value of critical rationalism as an expression of that nature over its competitor faiths. But it is just this that he fails to offer” (O’Hear 2004, 194). I believe Popper does offer such an account (even if there are strands of his thinking that prevent him from maintaining that it is epistemically justified relative to competitors).
- 4.
For a different reading of Popper’s foundational ethic, focused on the negative golden rule, see Pralong (1999, 136–138). Popper is also sometimes read as advancing negative utilitarianism, but Popper explicitly disavows it as a moral criterion (instead advancing it as a rough guide to public policy); see section 13 of the Addenda to Volume II of the fifth edition of the Open Society and Its Enemies (Popper 1966).
- 5.
For one who appears to accept a libertarian reading of Popper, see Corvi (1997, 72).
- 6.
- 7.
The following paragraphs borrow from Metz (2015a, 2017); what is intended to be new in this article is not the African ethic, but rather its application to political philosophical issues in ways that provide powerful alternatives to Popper’s political views. For different approaches to sub-Saharan morality, see, for just two examples, Bujo (2005), who takes vital force to be a basic value to be promoted, and Gyekye (2010), who treats the common good as foundational.
- 8.
For further discussion of this case, along with a case of autism, see Metz (2012b, 397–398).
- 9.
Although markets and bureaucracy fail to exemplify some harmony, as conceived of here, they do not essentially involve discord, either. For brief discussion of how the present ethic bears on these modern institutions, see Metz (2014a, 68–70).
- 10.
Governments might as an empirical matter be disinclined to adopt such an approach, but as a matter of normative political philosophy, for all that has been said so far, they should.
- 11.
- 12.
Leaving open the possibility that there are additional rationales for his political views beyond his Kantian ethics.
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Acknowledgments
This essay has been improved as a result of oral feedback received at the Conference on Karl Popper, Knowledge and Politics in Contemporary Africa organized by the Department of Philosophy at Lagos State University in Nigeria in 2019 as well as copious, useful, written comments from an anonymous referee.
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Metz, T. (2021). Popper’s Politics in the Light of African Values. In: Afisi, O.T. (eds) Karl Popper and Africa: Knowledge, Politics and Development. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74214-0_2
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