Like so much else in The Open Society and Its Enemies, the shift from truth to meaning is required by the Manichean political choice that the catastrophes of the first half of the twentieth century seemed to press upon the West: either an open society or Auschwitz. In the face of such a choice, the desire for transcendent truth, once considered healthy, becomes a dangerous temptation. According to Popper, the quest for a higher truth “is born of fear, for it shrinks from realizing that we bear the ultimate responsibility even for the standards we choose.”14 Since we often cannot endure the
...more
