ABSTRACT
Why bother studying Popper and Hayek in the twenty-first century? They may have had contributions to make in the heyday of positivism, historicism, fascism, Nazism, communism and socialism, but in the third millennium, surely we face unique and unprecedented problems. We have passed into a postmodern world with the challenges of terrorism, globalization, AIDS, poverty, feminism, environmental degradation and the “clash of civilizations”. My answer to these challenges is that not only were Popper and Hayek great philosophical thinkers but their theories and arguments, especially in political philosophy, are particularly relevant in the present age, whether it is characterized as the “end of history”, the “clash of civilizations”, post-modernism, or whatever other “ism” one cares to chose, including “the new terrorism”.1
