The Open Society and Its Enemies (Routledge Classics)

by Karl Popper

As a first example of this use of dialectics, I shall select the problem of freedom of thought, of the independence of science, and of the standards of objective truth, as treated by Hegel in the Philosophy of Law (§ 270). He begins with what can only be interpreted as a demand for freedom of thought, and for its protection by the state: ‘The state’, he writes, ‘has … thought as its essential principle. Thus freedom of thought, and science, can originate only in the state; it was the Church that burnt Giordano Bruno, and forced Galileo to recant … Science, therefore, must seek protection from the state, since … the aim of science is knowledge of objective truth.’ After this promising start which we may take as representing the ‘first impressions’ of his opponents, Hegel proceeds to bring them ‘to the opposite of what their first impressions pronounced correct’, covering his change of front by another sham attack on the Church: ‘But such knowledge does, of course, not always conform with the standards of science, it may degenerate into mere opinion …; and for these opinions … it’ (i.e. science) ‘may raise the same pretentious demand as the Church—the demand to be free in its opinions and convictions.’ Thus the demand for freedom of thought, and of the claim of science to judge for itself, is described as ‘pretentious’; but this is merely the first step in Hegel’s twist. We next hear that, if faced with subversive opinions, ‘the state must protect objective truth’; which rai...