Carlos Verdugo

In a famous passage, Kant claimed that controversy and the lack of agreement in metaphysics — here understood as philosophy as a whole — was a ‘scandal.’ Attempting to motivate his critique of pure reason, a project aimed at both ending the scandal and setting philosophy on the ‘secure path of science,’ Kant endorsed the view that for as long as disagreement reigned sovereign in philosophy, there would be little to be learned from it as a science. The success of philosophy begins when controversy ends and culminates when the discipline itself as it has been known disappears. On the other hand, particularly in the second half of the twentieth century, many have despaired of the very possibility of philosophy constituting the search for truth, that is to say, a cognitive human activity, and constituting thus a source of knowledge. This paper seeks to sketch a research program that is motivated by an intuition that opposes both of these views.

The reception and influence of Popper’s philosophy of science and his political philosophy in Latin America have depended heavily on the translation of his major works originally published in German and English. Thus, for example, The Logic of Scientific Discovery, which was originally published in 1959, was translated into Spanish in 1962 and into Portuguese only in 1974. Similarly, The Open Society and Its Enemies, originally published in 1945, was translated into Spanish twelve years later in 1957 and into Portuguese in 1974. But apart from a discussion of the impact of the translations of his books, I also want to show that the political situation in some Latin American countries, for example, Chile, Cuba and Peru, has played a very important role in the introduction, reception and influence of Popper’s philosophy of science in general and his social and political thought in particular. Accordingly, the main purpose of this article is to examine the reception of Popper’s ideas in Latin America and give an account of his influence and legacy in some of the Latin American countries such as Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Mexico, Peru and Uruguay.