This episode of the Popperian Podcast features an interview that Jed Lea-Henry conducted with Oseni Taiwo Afisi. They speak about Karl Popper’s book The Open Society and Its Enemies, the ideas and history behind the work, the place for the Open Society and Popper’s epistemology within the African context, how the communalism and collectivism in traditional Africa does not make it analogous to the repressive and totalitarian societies that Popper argued against, the difficult line between group rights and individual rights, the question of tribalism and Africa’s development, Popper’s concept of piecemeal social engineering in the African milieu, and the challenges of multiculturalism and heterogeneity to the Open Society in postcolonial Africa.

Oseni Taiwo Afisi is the current Head of the Department of Philosophy, Lagos State University, Nigeria. His areas of competence include critical thinking, logic, political philosophy and Philosophy of science with a special interest in Karl Popper’s critical rationalism. He received his Bachelor and Master’s degrees in Philosophy from the University of Lagos, Nigeria, and later proceeded to the University of Canterbury, New Zealand where he wrote his thesis on Karl Popper’s Critical Rationalism and the Politics of Liberal-Communitarianism, and obtained a PhD. degree in philosophy. He was a visiting academic to the Australian National University in 2011.

*** Karl Popper and Africa: Knowledge, Politics and Development (Karl Popper and Africa: Knowledge, Politics and Development : Oseni Taiwo Afisi : 9783030742133 (bookdepository.com)).

*** You can follow Oseni Taiwo Afisi’s ongoing work at: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Oseni-Taiwo-Afisi

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*** Underlying artwork by Arturo Espinosa