Though the wise know that history will inevitably repeat itself, mankind keeps on making the same mistakes. It is never an easy task to write about war and religion, and Dr. Jacques G. Ruelland has managed to do so clearly and without prejudice. Through his expose of the holy wars, this philosopher-historian traces a not-so-holy picture of civilization by analyzing the semantics of "sacredness" inherent to monotheistic religions. With the compassionate eye of the humanist, he helps us understand the origins of the justifications of wars waged in the name of the Almighty. Will we ever learn to eradicate this ancient practice? Not really, the historian believes, unless humanity can succeed in redefining the very notion of peace by assigning a new mission to science which would, ultimately, be dedicated to its real and ever-lasting pursuit.
This essay bridges the two wings of Popper's thinking, political philosophy and philosophy of science, thus steering a middle course between the two major receptions. It offers the double advantage of providing a faithful presentation of Popper's theses on the one hand, and of highlighting the links between the "falsificationist" theory of science and the liberal political thinking which together form the only way to an understanding of Popper's attack on "historicism", particularly Marxism, in his "Poverty of Historicism". Popper's political philosophy is extremely aggressive, especially in "The Open Society and its Enemies", but makes an effort to stress the point of the controversies it has raised, to present the objections from the Anglo-Saxon camp itself, which are all but unknown to continental philosophy. In this way he facilitates an inquiry into the possibility of a critical application of Popper's theses on history.
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