Popper sees any form of transcendence as implicitly totalitarian. The recognition of something higher than the individual sets up a suprapersonal authority. If I can know what it means to be human, then I have a standard by which to judge individual behavior, and it is just such a standard, Popper argues, that is characteristic of a closed society. Long before the invention of words such as “logocentrism,” Popper denounced strong truth-claims as threats to freedom and midwives of totalitarianism.
