A Free Left Blog

There's nothing like a good insult or two, and if you're looking for insults in philosophy, you need look no further than Arthur Schopenhauer's comments on his German contemporary, the much more popular and successful Friedrich Hegel.  Schopenhauer suggested as a motto of Hegel’s philosophy some words of Shakespeare: ‘s uch stuff as madmen tongue and brain not’. He added : " Hegel, installed from above, by the powers that be, as the certified Great Philosopher, was a flat-headed, insipid, nauseating, illiterate charlatan, who reached the pinnacle of audacity in scribbling together and dishing up the craziest mystifying nonsense. This nonsense has been noisily proclaimed as immortal wisdom by mercenary followers and readily accepted as such by all fools, who thus joined into as perfect a chorus of admiration as had ever been heard before. The extensive field of spiritual influence with which Hegel was furnished by those in power has enabled him to ac...

Karl Popper was first and foremost a philosopher of science, which makes his criticisms of pseudo-scientific theories of society especially powerful. In his book The Open Society and Its Enemies , Popper takes apart many social theories, including the 'prophecies' of Karl Marx. It is remarkable however how complimentary and sympathetic he is towards Marx. This following passage from The Open Society and Its Enemies sums up Popper's attitude towards Marx very nicely, and I thought it was worth posting up here. “[Marx underrated] the significance of his own moral ideas; for it cannot be doubted that the secret of his religious influence was in its moral appeal, that his criticism of capitalism was effective mainly as a moral criticism. Marx showed that a moral system can as such be unjust; that if the system is bad, then all the righteousness of the individuals who profit from it is a mere sham righteousness, is mere hypocrisy. For our responsibility extends to th...