Clearing the ground with his critique, he then occupies it with his own temporizing rhetoric, which alternates between fact-based truth and self-chosen meaning. In an open society, reason restricts itself to pragmatic, procedural, and data-driven analysis and argument, supplemented when necessary with “meaning” and other ambiguous terms. In this way, Popper hopes to encourage an enduring but non-metaphysical loyalty to the ideals of the open society.
