Joseph Agassi - Political Philosophy

Political Philosophy

Agassi suggests, in line with Popper’s political philosophy, that all schools of thought have thus far neglected the one major practical problem of ethics, namely moral brakes: when should one apply them? We know this much: the more decent people are, the sooner they are ready to put their brakes on. For example, Agassi observes that the German nation lost its moral brakes as soon as its Nazi rulers showed their hand.

According to Agassi, democracy is so outstanding that, no matter what the agenda is, it is still best. He developed further the methodology of critical rationalism which he adopted from Popper. According to him, critical rationalism gives the possibility to rationalists to account for checks and balances and democracy within their rationalism. Bootstrapping is the expression he coined for the approach to problems with the methodology of critical rationalism: Solutions are offered and then improved upon according to the results obtained as a never ending process. He acknowledges that even democracy is not immune to errors, and that it may even lead to its own destruction as it happened in 1933 in Germany. Nevertheless, says Agassi, democracy has a fair chance for success; in particular, in global politics due to its quick recovery procedure for confronting mistakes that find their way into the agenda of democratic institutions.