Argomentare o conversare in politica? Una sfida ancora aperta fra Karl Popper e Michael Oakeshott

In January 1948 Popper sent a copy of his essay Utopia and Violence to Oakeshott. The letters the two philosophers exchanged represent two different conceptions of politics. Both thinkers were opposed to the dogmatic use of reason. For Popper only a reasonable argument can stop violence-generating utopianism. Oakeshott, instead, theorizes the conversation as an encounter between the plural “voices” of civil society, without the need to seek absolute solutions to political issues. The synthesis of the reasonable and the skeptical model, after the end of the post-war ideological conflict, can still be a useful answer to face the challenges of contemporary politics.