The Role of Criticism in the Epistemology of Habermas and Popper

Extract

At the highest altitude, the issue addressed in this paper has to do with the epistemological status of criticism in Western philosophy. What type of knowledge results from criticism and what is the basis on which criticism may be judged as valid or invalid? It is arguable that criticism as a legitimate attitude toward the intellectual and aesthetic products of a society (including the social system itself) did not exist prior to ancient Greek philosophy. The pre-Socratic philosophers were possibly the first to employ criticism in something like the sense that we use this term today. It is not at all clear that traditional societies, including the remnants of traditional societies that exist today, either tolerated or encouraged criticism of their central beliefs, myths and values, and in the middle ages criticism dropped out of sight altogether, virtually until the enlightenment. Some idea of what happened to would-be critics of Christian societies in the middle-ages can be gained by observing some of the Islamic societies today with their enthusiasm for punishing heretics with death sentences.