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Popperand Poppers Critics First Thoughts | A First Things Blog

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Fr. Barron and Prof. Popperand Poppers Critics

Thursday, June 20, 2013, 3:55 PM

Matthew J. Franck | @MatthewJFranck

The redoubtable Fr. Robert Barron, in one of his regular (and regularly illuminating) forays into film criticism (when does this guy have time to go to the movies?), reviewed the new Superman movie Man of Steel at RealClearReligion. I recommend the reviewnot sure about the movie, on the other handbut I was struck by Fr. Barrons reliance on Karl Popper for his interpretation of Platos Republic, in an essay otherwise pretty sensible. Popper, hitherto known chiefly for his work in philosophy of science, ventured into political theory with The Open Society and Its Enemies in 1945, and identified Plato as one of the enemies for the alleged teaching of his Republic, with its famous abolition of private property, censorship and tight control of education, and its abolition of the natural family and eugenic breeding among the guardian class. Poppers book has remained perennially in print. But what really is the teaching of the Republic? Perhaps under the influence of Leo Strauss and Allan Bloom, I have always read it (and frequently taught it) as a comedy, which gets funnier every time I reread it. Like the best comedies, it has a very serious teaching to impart to us, in this case about political life and much else besides. And that teaching is not the wonderfulness of philosopher-kings, selective breeding, the employment of women as soldiers, and so on. Plato, in short, was not an idiot. As for Karl Popper, some smart people thought he was one. In 1950 he gave a lecture at the University of Chicago, evidently a kind of audition for an appointment there. This prospect alarmed Leo Strauss, who had arrived on the faculty there just a year before. He wrote to Eric Voegelin, at LSU, to solicit his view of Popper, whose Chicago lecture on social philosophy, Strauss said, was beneath contempt: it was the most washed-out lifeless positivism trying to whistle in the dark, linked to a complete inability to think rationally, although it passed itself off as rationalismit was very bad. I cannot imagine that such a man ever wrote something that was worthwhile reading, and yet it appears to be a professional duty to become familiar with his production. Voegelin replied just eight days later, with a letter that would be framed and displayed with a dedicated spotlight if there were a Museum of Academic Smackdowns. Herewith just some of the choicer parts of it (these excerpts are from Peter Emberley and Barry Coopers compilation of the Strauss-Voegelin correspondence, published twenty years ago as Faith and Political Philosophy): The opportunity to speak a few deeply felt words about Karl Popper to a kindred soul is too golden to endure a long delay. This Popper has been for years, not exactly a stone against which one stumbles, but a

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Fr. Barron and Prof. Popperand Poppers Critics First Thoughts | A First Things Blog

7/2/13 2:35 PM

troublesome pebble that I must continually nudge from the path, in that he is constantly pushed upon me by people who insist that his work on the open society and its enemies is one of the social science masterpieces of our times. This insistence persuaded me to read the work even though I would otherwise not have touched it. You are quite right that it is a vocational duty to make ourselves familiar with the ideas of such a work when they lie in our field; I would hold out against this duty the other vocational duty, not to write and publish such a work. In that Popper violated this elementary vocational duty and stole several hours of my lifetime, which I devoted in fulfilling my vocational duty, I feel completely justified in saying without reservation that this book is impudent, dilettantish crap. Every single sentence is a scandal, but it is still possible to lift out a few main annoyances. Voegelin proceeds to do just that, in some detail, remarking along the way that Popper is philosophically so uncultured, so fully a primitive ideological brawler, that he is not able even approximately to reproduce correctly the contents of one page of Plato. He concludes his judgment thus: Briefly and in sum: Poppers book is a scandal without extenuating circumstances; in its intellectual attitude it is the typical product of a failed intellectual; spiritually one would have to use expressions like rascally, impertinent, loutish; in terms of technical competence, as a piece in the history of thought, it is dilettantish, and as a result is worthless. A few months later Strauss belatedly thanked him for this letter, saying he had shown it to a trusted and influential colleague, who was thereby encouraged to throw his not inconsiderable influence into the balance against Poppers probable appointment here [at Chicago]. You thereby helped to prevent a scandal. And that, gentle readers, is apparently why Karl Popper did not wind up teaching at the University of Chicago. And why I have resolved never to read The Open Society and Its Enemies for any light it attempts to shed on Platos Republic. Life is too short for impudent, dilettantish crap. For Plato, on the other hand, one must make some time.
Comments (12)
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12 Comments

George Sim Johnston

June 20th, 2013 | 4:25 pm Be all this as it may, Poppers idea of falsificationthat a scientific theory is not scientific if it explains too much, can be adjusted to fit any data, and is basically not falsifiablehas proven a useful tool in exposing the flaws of Marxism, Freudian psychology, and Darwinism in its harder forms. These theories manage to explain any contradictory evidence that happens appear. Darwins explanation of why there are both winged and wingless beetles on the island of Madeira is a classic example. Its like shooting an arrow at a barn wall and then painting the target around it.

advisory opinion
June 20th, 2013 | 4:48 pm Shorter Franck: I havent read the book, but its crap and the author is an idiot. I got the vivid sensation of watching your mind whir while it closed upon itself, as you worked through an argument that turned wholly on invective

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Fr. Barron and Prof. Popperand Poppers Critics First Thoughts | A First Things Blog

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and ad hominem. Very Leiterish. Then the conceit that you are closed-minded and proud of it. What a rebel you are, Franck. Hubris upon conceit, really: we dismiss The Open Society and Its Enemies because it is an exercise in impudence. I think you need to reflect, and have a quiet word with yourself.

Daniel Propson
June 20th, 2013 | 5:47 pm Certainly The Republic is complex, and certainly Plato realizes how outlandish some of the ideas are, but I dont see why it follows that the political proposals are not meant seriously. This does not mean that Plato meant to enact them, of course. But Plato thought that he was creating the most just society possible, under the provisional theory that justice is a harmony in the city. I dont see what is obviously idiotic, to the Greek mind, about selective breeding, for example. Nor do I see why Plato would reject the idea of philosopher kings. So many aspects of Platos politeia are profound and inspiring that it is sort of ad hoc to say that Plato rejected all of the aspects which we think are silly. As for Popper, he was right at least insofar as he said that Plato was an enemy of the open society. But Im not sure that Poppers defense of the open society is any better than Platos defense of a closed society.

Matthew J. Franck
June 20th, 2013 | 7:14 pm Dear advisory opinion: Come now. Poppers thesis about Plato is famous. I know his evidence very wellPlatos Republicand I regard his thesis as a failure in light of that evidence. But more than that: my view is fortified by the testimony of two brilliant men who knew Plato better than most, who disagreed with each other about many things but not about the insipid shallowness of Poppers book. I quoted the choicer parts of Voegelins letter, but what I left out contains ample support for the judgment he shared with Strauss. Life is too short to read every book there is, even in ones own fields of professional interest. We rely for much of our decision-making on what to read on the opinions of others whom we trust, in book reviews and scholarly judgments of various sorts. We sometimes err in trusting these secondhand accounts, or in mistrusting them. But we cannot get along without relying on the opinions of others to a very great degree. Knowing what I know myself about Plato, what I am reliably told about Poppers view even by his admirers, and what two serious men had to say about a book they held in contempt (a book treated seriously, so far as I know, by no working Plato scholars), I feel quite safe in reserving my time for other reading. This isnt being closed-minded. This is exercising rational judgment.

David Layman
June 20th, 2013 | 8:41 pm The first philosophical essay I wroteat the University of Chicago, no less was on something like Existentiality in the Structure of the Platonic

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Fr. Barron and Prof. Popperand Poppers Critics First Thoughts | A First Things Blog

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Dialectic. I got an A on it. Now Im curious: please explain how the Republic is a comedy.

David Naas
June 20th, 2013 | 9:15 pm While I have read neither Popper nor Strauss (life IS too short, after all) I have read much of Plato (in English translation not having any ancient Greek), and have concluded that no matter what position one takes, Plato can be lent to both support or contradict (with suitable twisting, anyway). Not having read any Strauss, my impression is that he is a conceited ass, whose orbiter dicta are not worth an hour of my life to contemplate. Wow, this intellectual snobbishness works any which way, does it not? I did read the Fr. Barron piece before I found this one, and, not having a dull axe, thought that Popper was used to illustrate a point more Barron than Popper, although, not being a pugilist of the academic brawling culture, it is easy for ME to say, I Could Be Wrong.

Michael PS
June 21st, 2013 | 3:31 am One recalls Pascal: We can only think of Plato and Aristotle in grand academic robes. They were honest men, like others, laughing with their friends, and, when they diverted themselves with writing their Laws and the Politics, they did it as an amusement. That part of their life was the least philosophic and the least serious; the most philosophic was to live simply and quietly. If they wrote on politics, it was as if laying down rules for a lunatic asylum [un hpital de fous]; and if they presented the appearance of speaking of a great matter, it was because they knew that the madmen, to whom they spoke, thought they were kings and emperors. They entered into their principles in order to make their madness as little harmful as possible.

Mike Walsh, MM
June 21st, 2013 | 6:45 am We cannot get along without relying on the opinions of others to a very great degree. Amen, Mr. Franck, especially with regard to Voegelin. Reading him as an undergraduate inoculated me against much of the intellectual pathologies I encountered in the seminary.

Charles E Flynn
June 21st, 2013 | 7:51 pm Karl Poppers Logic of Scientific Discovery explained the demarcation between science and pseudo-science, a subject that arose in Poppers mind when he wondered why Einstein was a scientist, and Freud and Marx were quacks. For this accomplishment, which was described as a service to humanity, he was knighted.

David Layman
June 22nd, 2013 | 8:34 am So Plato was funny. So is Jon Steward. Doesnt mean I interpret his routines as a positive source for political or moral guidance. Im still trying to figure how the comedy in Plato enables us to makes use of the proposed fascist

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state in The Republic. Sure, Plato was nothing if not dialectical. Maybe in saying x he really meant not-x, or at least z. Im still curious for a hint of what exact dialectical transformation Prof. Franck is proposing.

Michael PS
June 23rd, 2013 | 3:51 am David Layman wrote, Im still trying to figure how the comedy in Plato enables us to makes use of the proposed fascist state in The Republic. One suggestion is contained in Pascals remark that I quoted above; Plato was laying down rules for the government of the hpital de fous which is any state created by and for fallen man. It is a sustained satire on the nature of fallen man. Even a pagan, like Plato, could see there is in man some great source of greatness and a great source of wretchedness, although he had no way of divining the source of these astonishing contradictions.

David Layman
June 23rd, 2013 | 1:02 pm @Michael PS: I agree that is a possible interpretation but it seems to me to be nonresponsive to the question. Prof. Franck specifically says that Platos teaching is not the wonderfulness of philosopher-kings (etc.). So what is it about? If Republic is entirely a via negativa, then how can it possibly be philosophically useful? It might be historically useful as an ironic response to the particular politics of the post-Peloppenesian War classical city-state, but thats not what Franck seems to be proposing. It seems to me that he wants to have his cake and eat it too: to use Plato philosophically in contemporary reflection, and then, when the ethicalpolitical unintelligibility is pointed out, to respond, But Plato is comic (or ironic, or sardonic, or whatever the exact literary genre is thought to be). I repeat my question: what is the positive political-ethical content of Republic?

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