Some thirty years after the author’s death, the work of Karl Popper (1902-1994) may experience new relevance. Two recent publications encourage us to believe this. His intellectual autobiography, Unfinished Questpublished in English in 1976, translated into French by Calmann-Lévy in 1981, now used by Les Belles Lettres (“The Taste of ideas”, 356 pages, 17 euros). The return of the logician to his itinerary allows us to better understand the man and gauge the extent of his reflection. Next, a new complete translation of Open Society and its enemiesalso in Belles Lettres, restores this key text from 1945 to its original face and ferocity, providing an opportunity to understand its relevance for deciphering and combating the current crisis.
The thinker, born in Vienna, into a family of learned jurists, was an unusual intellectual and adventurer. In his youth, he planned to become a laborer, trained in cabinet making, and for a time envisioned a career as a musician, before becoming a mathematics teacher. His career at university did not go smoothly. From his native Austria to the London School of Economics, where he taught for the last eighteen years of his life, through the University of Christchurch (New Zealand), where he worked from 1937 to 1946, this sharp mind never stopped wanting to change thinking.
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