Sir Karl Popper

Star philosopher of the 20th century

For nearly half a century the internationally renowned philosopher lived in England, where he was knighted by the Queen. However, he comes from a typical Viennese background. The son of Jewish parents that converted to Catholicism - his father was from Prague, his mother’s family came from Silesia and Hungary – Karl Popper spent his childhood in the Belle Époque, his youth in wartime and enjoyed the intellectual influence of the Vienna Circle - including Carnap and Wittgenstein – in the First Republic.

In “Red Vienna”, the period of social democrat mayors and important social reforms, he got involved with the socialist youth movement and worked at Alfred Adler’s parent counselling centres for Individual Psychology in the workers’ districts. After a carpentry apprenticeship and a discontinued course in church music, he studied philosophy, obtaining his doctorate under the philosopher of language Karl Bühler, taught maths at a secondary school and wrote about the basic problems of epistemology, or the theory of knowledge, without ever publishing his research. While in Vienna he produced his main theoretical work, “The Logic of Scientific Discovery”.

Popper emigrated in 1937 and after years in New Zealand was offered a position at the London School of Economics through Hayek’s mediation, where he was Professor of Logic until his retirement.

Throughout his life a clear and strident thinker, he made his mark on the philosophical debate of the 20th century with his assertion that knowledge always arises temporarily from the systematic attempt to repudiate theories. His influential book “The Open Society and Its Enemies”, with its harsh criticism of Plato, Hegel and Marx, is a fundamental text of political liberalism. Among the numerous awards Popper received was an honorary doctorate from Vienna University, to which Popper returned as guest professor in 1986.