On the Sources of Knowledge and of Ignorance
Inscribed and signed with the author's initials on the front wrapper: "Fur Hans Kelsen, in Verehrung, von K.R.P." Rare association copy between two twentieth-century philosophers important for their defense of democracy in the face of authoritarianism's rise in the 1930s and beyond. The two, while united in their commitment to democracy as the ideal social framework, disagreed on the foundational reasoning behind their promotion of democratic values. Karl Popper argued that through collaborative human effort and debate it was possible to achieve continuous movement towards an ideal state of affairs, or even towards truth itself: he closes this speech with the statement, "all we can do is to grope for truth even though it be beyond our reach" (p. 71). Kelsen instead rejected the idea of an abstract truth to be strived towards, arguing that the process of debate in a democratic society was both the means and the end in establishing political legitimacy and ensuring social progress. The two famously debated while Popper was a student-teacher in Vienna in the late 1920s-early 1930s, with a near-unknown Popper often pushing back against Kelsen, an already-established authority, on the matter of relativism as a foundation for democracy. The present association copy testifies to the deep mutual respect the two philosophers shared. Annotations presumably in Kelsen's hand dot nine pages of the text – not all positive – but certainly indicative of Kelsen's close consideration of Popper's thought even nearly a decade after the former's retirement from U.C. Berkeley.
London: Oxford University Press, 1960. 39-71 pp. Offprint, from the Proceedings of the British Academy, Volume XLVI. Publisher's printed wrappers. Light wear and creasing, with minor toning to outer leaves and outer edges of pages. Item #8Price: $2,000.00