Karl Popper's Open Society and its Enemies, and its Enemies

2023

Should the laws that govern our society be subject to criticism? Can the laws, or the political regime we live in, be criticized by the people who are subjected to them? The answer to these questions seems so obvious to a contemporary Western citizen that it is easy to forget that, for most of human history, this was the exception rather than the rule. And even today, in many parts of the world, it is still the exception rather than the rule. This was the case not only in feudal regimes, but also in the absolutist regimes of many centuries ago, and in the historically closer fascist and communist regimes. Even today there are things that cannot be questioned without censorship and pressure (including coercion by the state apparatus). Rulers sometimes use censorship, permanent states of emergency, prisons, political police, and different forms of coercion such as the “protection” of national interest or the “laws of history”. They also stir up the dangers of “hate speech” or “fake news”, which can serve as a tool to avoid criticism by invoking the general good and protection of the nation, race, peace, progress, health, “genuine” democracy and even, paradoxically, tolerance. For Popper, what characterizes the “open society” is critical freedom, as opposed to what he calls a “closed society”, where laws are seen as “magical taboos”, as unquestionable claims that derive their authority from a non-rational source, which may be God, the will of the king or the aristocracy, convention or tradition, or the trends of the future, the progress or inescapable march of history. “(...) [A] closed society is characterized by a belief in magical taboos, while the open society is one in which men have learned to be to some extent critical of taboos, and to base decisions on the authority of their own intelligence.” In ancient Greece there was a “spiritual revolution”, says Popper; it was not an organized revolution, or a conscious one, or one that can be identified with a definitive initial event; but it was the genesis of the possibility of the open society. This revolution occurred with the appearance of critical thinking, free from the influence of magical taboos, stimulated by the weakening of the aristocracy of the time – which was tribalistic and owner of almost all property – which, in order to deal with the population growth and with the threat that this brought to its hegemony, initiated a process of “imperialist” colonization. The empire of Athens in turn brought about massive development in maritime navigation and, more importantly, in commerce. We may question the accuracy of this historical portrayal, and its causes, but it is hard to deny that a metamorphosis took place in ancient Greece, which is where philosophy, democracy and science originated. This transformation came about when exposure to different cultures led some thinkers to realize that the laws, rites and conventions of their home cultures were “man-made” rather than the result of inescapable fate. Men thus began to question the conventions that governed them, and truly free and critical thinking was born. It is important to highlight the origins of the open society according to Popper, as we see that its “openness” is not something obvious, but something that emerged as a kind of “miracle” in the very specific conditions of ancient Greece. But Popper does not limit himself to contrasting the open society with the closed society and to describing the historical emergence of the open society. He argues that the transition from the closed society to the open society is still ongoing. It had its beginnings with the Greeks and was inherited by Western civilization, but it is still important in our time, as there is a permanent temptation to return to the closed society. The closed society gives a sense of security, not allowing the questioning of laws or regimes, nor permitting the holding of different opinions, especially the most “repulsive” ones. This permanent temptation to turn back shows us how important an open society is, this fragile jewel that we inherited from the Greeks. Popper conceived his work as a defence of the open society, which he described as his contribution to “the war effort” against communism, Nazism and, in general, against the attacks that it suffered in the middle of the twentieth century.

Cosmos + Taxis, 2019

Karl Popper champions an open society in which all institutions, principles and values are open to criticism. Anthony O'Hear contends that Popper's vision is utopian because an open society can survive only if some non-liberal values are assumed, including the prohibition of criticism of fundamental liberal principles and values. I correct O'Hear's interpretation of Popper and I rebut most of his criticisms, arguing that an open society is stronger if it permits criticism of all views. However, I accept and strengthen O'Hear's rejection of Popper's assimilation of an open society to a scientific community. I also suggest that the survival of open societies may require limits on immigration from societies permeated by Islamic fundamentalism or similar ideologies.

Journal of Philosophical Investigations (JPI) , 2023

After offering an overview of some of the main themes of Popper’s political thought, the paper argues that his account faces two problems relating to institutions. The first is that while Popper stresses the ‘rational unity of mankind’, and the potential for any of us to furnish criticisms of public policy, it is not clear what institutional means currently exist for this to enable this to take place. Second, Popper has stressed the conjectural character of even our best theories. However, at any point, some theories will have fared better in the face of criticism than others, and they may give us important information about constraints on our actions. At the same time, as ordinary citizens we may not be in a good position to understand the theories in question, let alone appraise the state of the specialised discussion of them. There is, it is suggested, a case for thinking of ways to institutionally entrench such fallible theories, especially in the current setting in which social media play an important role.

Central European University Press eBooks, 2023

The idea of "open society" has experienced a small revival within academic political philosophy in the United States since the publication of Gerald Gaus's The Tyranny of the Ideal (2016). 1 Of course, "open society" has been an influential theme in public discourse since Karl Popper published The Open Society and Its Enemies in 1945 (1966a, 1966b), and it has continued to engage thinkers across the political spectrum through the work of the Open Society Foundations, related academic organizations like the Open Society University Network, and think tanks like the Niskanen Center (Niskanen 2022). 2 But within American analytic philosophy departments, the idea of open society has largely ceased to frame debates about the nature of a sustainable liberal political order. This is unfortunate at a time when broad church liberalism needs a robust defense against authoritarian threats, dogmatic partisans, and the decline of liberal democratic norms in many countries. The attention Gaus and others have paid to the idea of open society is, therefore, a welcome development, but I worry that some leading ideas in that revival fail to meet our political moment. In The Tyranny of the Ideal, Gaus reminds us of important core elements of Popper's account of open society: that being committed to justice is not necessarily the same as being committed to one's own current conception of justice, that we should always remain open to critical discussion and social diversity, that this has implications for the way we organize ourselves socially and politically, and that such openness suggests a piecemeal approach to solving social and political problems. Gaus extends this line of thought to contemporary debates within political philosophy, arguing that it should limit the role that ideals of justice play in our current collective decision-making about how to organize ourselves.

The Impact of Critical Rationalism, 2018

IntroductIon "I am reading with great interest your dissertation and hope it will become a book," wrote me Ian in an October 1994 email, our first communication. "Not that I agree with everything in it, far from it," he added. Then, he proceeded to invite me to contribute to a special issue of Philosophy of the Social Sciences, "The Open Society After 50 Years." This was the beginning of a decade long correspondence on Popper and his philosophy. We met in person on several occasions: I invited Ian, in 2000, for a Vienna "rehearsal" of "Scientific World Conceptions," a summer course that has since become the flagship program of the University of Vienna Summer School. We then attended together the HOPOS conference. We met again at the Karl Popper Centenary Congress in Vienna two years later. My essays on Karl Popper (Hacohen 1996, 2006) outline the Popper phase in my life. Ian was an integral part of it, someone with whom I could discuss Popper's biography, politics, and sociology of science. Ian knew Popper well, both as his student in the 1960s and as a scholar, but he charted his

Al-Hikmat: A Journal of Philosophy, 2023

To evaluate Jeremy Shearmur and Piers Norris Turner's edited volume, Karl Popper: After the Open Society: Selected Social and Political Writings (2008), I seek to examine what Katrina Forrester saw as Popper's "later" views, and how this would deflect the central idea of liberalism expressed by Popper in The Open Society and Its Enemies and The Poverty of Historicism. Forrester's assertion suggests that the views expressed by Popper in After the Open Society appear more towards neoliberalism, and that Popper's membership of the Mont Pélerin Society alongside Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman in promoting free market, openness, and individual freedom, set him comfortably within the framework of classical liberalism and market fundamentalism. To appreciate Popper's liberal political philosophy, one only needs to come to a high level of understanding and a good appreciation of the values inherent in The Open Society and Its Enemies and The Poverty of Historicism by evaluating his liberal worldview in the context of Popper's critical rationalism. The primary goal of this essay is to show that Forrester' scategorization of the 'later' Popper as a neoliberal is incorrect. Popper's ideas were strictly liberal, but they impacted the development of neoliberal ideas. In placing Popper properly within the realm of liberals, what is required is to understand that Popper's liberal concepts as articulated in all five versions of The Open Society and its Enemies, and the two editions of The Poverty of Historicism serve quite well his liberal outlooks.

Political Studies, 1990

The ethical theory of Popper's Open Society threatens, against his wishes, to lapse into a form of relativism. This consequence is avoided if a closer parallel than Popper himself allows for is drawn between his ethical theory and his epistemology. This produces a fallibilistic ethical intuitionism, in which the judgements of the individual are subject to criticism by the judgements of others. From this, however, an epistemological rationale is provided for the autonomy of the individual and moral limits are drawn to the sphere of legitimate action by the state. ' Based on a section of a paper, 'Karl Popper and liberalism', delivered at the First Annual Conference on the Thought of Karl Popper, in Manchester, England, May 1983. I should like to thank Michael Lessnoff, the commentator on the paper on that occasion (who, however, found himself in little sympathy with my wish to assimilate Popper to classical liberalism) and Larry Briskman, Alistair Edwards, David Gordon and Emilio Pacheco for their comments on various versions of this paper. The usual disclaimers apply. I should also like to thank the anonymous referee of this journal for some very helpful comments.

Gaus has recently offered a novel argument for an open society, connecting it to recent methodological debates regarding ideal and non-ideal theory. The argument, briefly put, is that political philosophies based upon the search for an ideal to anchor their critical and prescriptive ambitions, so-called “ideal theories,” are bound to fail. The best possible case for doing ideal theory should lead us to recognize that such endeavors are conceptually incoherent or lead to morally perverse outcomes. Consequently, the best way to approximate a knowledge of the optimal institutional state of affairs is to organize institutions around the goal of maximizing perspectival diversity, what Gaus calls the “Open Society,” not according to an ideal blueprint. I argue that precisely because ideal theory has the problems that Gaus skillfully illuminates, we should be skeptical about the picture he paints of the Open Society.