Breadcrumbs Section. Click here to navigate to respective pages.
Book

Book
Popper, Hayek and the Open Society
DOI link for Popper, Hayek and the Open Society
Popper, Hayek and the Open Society book
Popper, Hayek and the Open Society
DOI link for Popper, Hayek and the Open Society
Popper, Hayek and the Open Society book
Get Citation
ABSTRACT
This is the first book to compare Karl Popper and Friedrich Hayek systematically, and critically assess their contribution to the political philosophy of the Open Society. Hayes compares and contrasts their views on three key areas relevant to their political philosophy; first their views on scientific method, their views on philosophy of social science and then their moral philosophy including their meta-ethical views. The author focuses on their contributions to social science methodology, their ethical views about negative utilitarianism and negative rights, and their contrasting views on Utopianism. He finishes by arguing that their versions of liberal political philosophy are both immune to Alastair MacIntyre's critique of liberal individualism and also meet his challenge to the Enlightenment project.
Hayes' position is generally controversial in that he defends Popper and Hayek in areas where they are almost universally criticized, namely Hayek's notion of the meaninglessness of social justice and Popper's claim that there is no need for induction in either scientific reasoning or common sense reasoning. One main finding in this book concerns the two major problems that bedevil modern philosophy: induction and the is-ought problem. The author proposes an original solution to the is-ought problem as well to the infinite regress problem.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
chapter |8 pages
Introduction
part |2 pages
PART I Popper, Hayek, modernity and ideology
chapter 1|13 pages
Popper, Hayek and the grand narrative of modernity
chapter 2|17 pages
Ideology, ideals and political philosophy
part |2 pages
PART II The epistemology/ethics enigma
chapter 3|12 pages
Popper in the Weimar era (1919–1933)
chapter 4|15 pages
The refutation of positivism and socialism
chapter 5|17 pages
The Open Society and the road to The Road to Serfdom
part |2 pages
PART III From epistemology and methodology to ethics and meta-ethics
chapter 6|21 pages
Historicism, scientism and collectivism
chapter 7|13 pages
Accentuating the negative: Utility and rights
chapter 8|14 pages
Is “liberal utopia” an oxymoron?
part |2 pages
PART IV The Achilles heel of the Popper–Hayek meta-theory
chapter 9|16 pages
The Achilles heel: Max Weber’s quasi-positivism
chapter 10|18 pages
Relativism, scepticism and “the Enlightenment Project”
chapter 11|12 pages
Evolutionary ethics, Darwinism and the naturalistic fallacy
part |2 pages
PART V Liberal individualism, the Enlightenment Project, justice and the Open Society