[lit-ideas] Re: Popper and the Third World
- From: Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 13 Oct 2004 16:13:43 +0100 (BST)
> ---- That was a delightful anecdote. Thanks for sharing, Donal.
Another, perhaps less delightful, is outlined below.
> Incidentally, it touches on Grice's idea of personal identity. If it's
> one's
> ideals that define a selfhood or personhood, Sir Karl (or "KR") must have
> _still_ been a bit of a leftist when he wrote that (metaphorically speaking
> --):
> I mean to say, it was the same Popper's "I".
Aside from the last sentence (the sense of which escapes me), yes I think P
was a bit of a "leftist" til the end of his days (this issue is complicated;
and unfortunately muddled by the ideologically-driven agenda of certain
'lefties' who would prefer to dismiss P as a neo-con reactionary, and perhaps
have a sufficiently gullible and half-educated audience that will easily
accept this from the podium).
1) As regards "anecdotes", Popper's first letter to me was written on
something akin to grease-proof paper that had clearly been torn off at the
bottom from an even longer piece of paper. It had at the bottom, in another's
writing and ink, the word "diriclete" or something (perhaps someone here can
explain?). I was charmed rather than insulted. But I have heard since of a
somewhat similar story [from a Popper list I subscribe to]. In this case the
person received a letter of reply from P and was of course somewhat delighted
that he bothered, even if the paper it was written on seemed somewhat
scrappy. Having read the letter once, twice and three times they put it
facedown on the kitchen table. Then they saw that on the back of the letter
and in another handwriting was the following - 'Karl, get milk x2, cheese,
butter, bread, - Hennie'.
2) Popper in his Schilpp volume makes clear he would still advocate socialism
if it did not endanger freedom and then not even in practice produce equality
among the unfree. He was clearly for a more egalitarian society, but he
thought this should not be an obsession [if we have enough why obsess that
others have more?] - unlike getting rid of poverty, disease etc. which we
should perhaps be obsessed about.
Donal
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