Joseph Agassi

Joseph Agassi (יוסף אגסי; born Joseph Birnbaum; 7 May 1927 – 22 January 2023) was an Israeli academic with contributions in logic, scientific method, and philosophy.

He studied under Karl Popper and taught at the London School of Economics.

He was close to Hillel Kook who advocated severely limiting the Right of Return, forming a Hebrew Nation and creation of a Constitution already in 1948.

Agassi was very much influenced by these views.

Agassi had written widely on global politics and on the methodology to implement global politics.

His methodology was consistently procedural, without having requests for systematic procedures.

His demands from those who design global politics are minimalist: small methodological changes may lead to large-scale achievements.

Agassi also proposed to bring global problems to public agendas for discussions in different forums, in particular in workshops where discussions are held with an agreed-upon agenda: the agenda, said Agassi, should be discussed and set by the participants prior to the discussion.

He was married to Judith Buber Agassi – Martin Buber's granddaughter – from 1949 until her death in 2018.

Agassi taught in the Department of Philosophy of the University of Hong Kong from 1960 to 1963.

He later taught at the University of Illinois, Boston University, and York University in Canada.

He had dual appointments in the last positions with Tel Aviv University.

Agassi was born into a haredi family who lived in Jerusalem's Buchari neighborhood.

In his youth studied in the Mercaz haRav yeshiva in Jerusalem.

Later he left religious life.

Together they had two children, Aaron, and Tirzah, who died of cancer in March 2008.

Agassi resided in Herzliya, Israel.

Tirzah's name, when she was a child, was often used by Popper in his dictum "Write it for Tirzah!"

to explain his view that everyone has the duty to write in a clearly and easily understandable language.

Agassi died on 22 January 2023, at the age of 95.

Agassi's prime interest was in science, metaphysics, and politics.

He took it that philosophy is nothing if not rationalist.

For over fifty years he studied the rationality of science, metaphysics, and democratic politics.

An advocate of Popper's philosophy with variations, Agassi ignored many of the problems that concern some philosophers of science, chiefly that of theory choice.

The problems of the philosophy of technology engaged him, including the problem of choosing scientific theories and ideas worthy of application and implementation.

Agassi had expressed criticism against the settler movement and advocated for Israel to "separate" from the worldwide Jewish community:

"The flimsy excuse – the notion that Israel belongs to the Jewish people and not to the Israeli nation – is the very threat to its independence. It is therefore imperative that Israel should recognize its nation as separate and different from the Jewish people."