Karl Popper - The Formative Years, 1902–1945
Politics and Philosophy in Interwar Vienna

This 2001 biography reassesses philosopher Karl Popper's life and works within the context of interwar Vienna.

Malachi Haim Hacohen (Author)

9780521470537, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 23 October 2000

626 pages
23.8 x 16.2 x 4.6 cm, 0.971 kg

'Malachi Hacohen's biography of Karl Popper is in many ways an extraordinary book … Hacohen's book is not only unique, its extremely careful, quite detailed, and very well-written. It is clearly … a truly great biography.' Review of Social Economy

Karl Popper (1902–1994) is one of this century's most influential philosophers, but his life in fin-de siècle and interwar Vienna, and his exile in New Zealand during World War II, have so far remained shrouded in mystery. This intellectual 2001 biography recovers the legacy of the young Popper; the progressive, cosmopolitan, Viennese socialist who combated fascism, revolutionized the philosophy of science, and envisioned the Open Society. Malachi Hacohen delves into his archives (as well as the archives of his colleagues) and draws a compelling portrait of the philosopher, the assimilated Jewish intelligentsia, and the vanished culture of Red Vienna, which was decimated by Nazism. Hacohen's adventurous biography restores Popper's works to their original Central European contexts and, at the same time, shows that they have urgent messages for contemporary politics and philosophy.

Introduction
1. Progressive philosophy and the politics of Jewish assimilation in Late Imperial Vienna
2. The Great War, the Austrian Revolution, and communism
3. The early 1920s: school reform, socialism, and cosmopolitanism
4. The pedagogic institute and the psychology of knowledge, 1925–28
5. The philosophical breakthrough, 1929–32
6. The Logic of Scientific Discovery and the philosophical revolution
7. Red Vienna, the 'Jewish Question', and emigration, 1936–37
8. Social science in exile, 1938–39
9. The Open Society, 1940–42
10. The rebirth of liberalism in science and politics, 1943–45.

Subject Areas: Philosophy of science [PDA], Political science & theory [JPA], Sociology & anthropology [JH], Jewish studies [JFSR1], Western philosophy, from c 1900 - [HPCF], 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000 [HBLW], European history [HBJD]