Shedding the Subaltern Condition: Karl Popper and the New Cosmopolitanism

What is it about?

One of the possible ways of conceptualising the overwhelming challenges now facing the countries of the African continent is to say that the people of Africa cope with the condition of subalternity. By subalternity, I understand as an inability to direct one’s own fate and to shape the structures of one own society. In this paper, I pose the question, to what extent does the intellectual resources capable of meeting this challenge be found in Karl Popper’s philosophy? In order to outline an answer to this question, I explore some philosophical and political ideas put forward by Popper in order to see how they can help us to understand those challenges, and possibly to deal with them. Firstly, I refer to the experience of the Central and Eastern European countries whose comprehensive transformation of 1989 has been guided to a significant degree by Popper’s idea of the open society, and to the present revival of the exclusionary tendencies in the region. I argue that his view of the acceptable reform, based on the conception of the piecemeal engineering, which unduly delimit the scope of the political action, is excessively conservative. Secondly, I critically examine his contentious claim that western civilization is not only the best of the existing worlds but also morally superior to others. Thirdly, I argue that through his construal of the enemies of the open society, Popper intended to expunge from the European tradition the tendencies he perceived as negative which are, nevertheless, an essential ingredient of that tradition. Following a critical appraisal of Popper’s understanding of equality and unity, I suggest that the theory of recognition based on the concept of diversity may provide a more effective theoretical foundation for a new cosmopolitanism capable of addressing the problems of today’s Africa, as well as those of today’s Europe.

Featured Image