The Open Society and Its Enemies: New One-Volume Edition by Karl R. Popper (PDF)

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One of the most important books of the twentieth century, Karl Popper’s The Open Society and Its Enemies is an uncompromising defense of liberal democracy and a powerful attack on the intellectual origins of totalitarianism. Popper was born in 1902 to a Viennese family of Jewish origin. He taught in Austria until 1937, when he emigrated to New Zealand in anticipation of the Nazi annexation of Austria the following year, and he settled in England in 1949. Before the annexation, Popper had written mainly about the philosophy of science, but from 1938 until the end of the Second World War he focused his energies on political philosophy, seeking to diagnose the intellectual origins of German and Soviet totalitarianism. The Open Society and Its Enemies was the result.An immediate sensation when it was first published in two volumes in 1945, Popper’s monumental achievement has attained legendary status on both the Left and Right and is credited with inspiring anticommunist dissidents during the Cold War. Arguing that the spirit of free, critical inquiry that governs scientific investigation should also apply to politics, Popper traces the roots of an opposite, authoritarian tendency to a tradition represented by Plato, Marx, and Hegel.In a substantial new introduction written for this edition, acclaimed political philosopher Alan Ryan puts Popper’s landmark work in biographical, intellectual, and historical context. Also included is a personal essay by eminent art historian E. H. Gombrich, in which he recounts the story of the book’s eventual publication despite numerous rejections and wartime deprivations.

User’s Reviews

Editorial Reviews: Review “Learned, subtly argued, and passionately written.”—Sidney Hook, New York Times”No thinking person would be doing himself a service by neglecting Popper’s book.”—Joseph Craft, The Nation”One of the great books of the century.” ― Times”Brilliant. . . . It remains the best intellectual defence of liberal democracy.” ― Economist”Magnificent.”—Hugh Trevor-Roper, Polemic”Few philosophers . . . have combined such a vast width of knowledge with the capacity to produce important original ideas as [Popper] did.” ― Guardian”A major work. Combining the clarity of thought of the trained scientist with lucidity of presentation, Mr. Popper has written an unusually thoughtful and provocative book.”—Hans Kohn, Yale Review Review “A work of first-class importance which ought to be widely read for its masterly criticism of the enemies of democracy, ancient and modern.”―Bertrand Russell”Sir Karl Popper was right.”―Václav Havel”A powerful and important book. Dr. Popper writes with extreme clarity and vigour. His studies in Greek history and Greek thought have obviously been profound and original. Platonic exegesis will never be the same again. Nor, I think, will Marxist exegesis.”―Gilbert Ryle From the Back Cover “A work of first-class importance which ought to be widely read for its masterly criticism of the enemies of democracy, ancient and modern.”–Bertrand Russell”Sir Karl Popper was right.”–Václav Havel”A powerful and important book. Dr. Popper writes with extreme clarity and vigour. His studies in Greek history and Greek thought have obviously been profound and original. Platonic exegesis will never be the same again. Nor, I think, will Marxist exegesis.”–Gilbert Ryle About the Author Karl Popper (1902-1994) was one of the most important philosophers of the twentieth century. His books include The Logic of Scientific Discovery, The Poverty of Historicism, Conjectures and Refutations, and an autobiography, Unended Quest. He was a professor at the London School of Economics. Read more

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐Popper’s rich and convincing indictment against state religion and limitless power caught in the vacuum of historicist prophecy is unsparing, lucid and enlightening. Plato, Hegel and Marx represent the historicist tradition of social engineering, and their philosophical contributions, though of great importance, have collectively served to undermine the transparency of the open society; that is, real democracy. Of the three, Popper strikes an intriguing affection and pity for Marx, whom he distinguishes from Plato and Hegel as utterly sincere and well intentioned, but a failed prophet nonetheless. Of Plato’s logical aptitude and sociological ingenuity, Popper pays due credit. Hegel, however, is a different story altogether. To Popper, Hegel was an arcane and mendacious state philosopher, one who cloaked his philosophy in impenetrable mysticism and specious reasoning. He is given the briefest analysis out of the three, but his worst tendencies echo in the impoverished corners of Marx’s epistemology.Plato’s legacy and intellectual foundations are not assessed on their terms, but are reviewed in context of preceding historical ideas and institutions. This is fitting for the historical and philosophical conceit of the book, for Plato, like Hegel and Marx, would stake the condition of the present moment as the natural heir to the past. At first sight this claim is perfectly reasonable; however, Plato did not conceive progression as a mere product of linear continuity, but as a thing in itself; history is a kind of living entity implicit in its tradition of chaos. In light of the travesty of Athenian democracy, of Socrates’ fate, and the Tyranny of Thirty, Plato resigns himself to the role of reformer. He achieves this by continuing the Socratic tradition of the dialectic and by mounting a damning charge against and lucid alternative to democracy. Surveying the classes, Plato ascribes qualities to each as the motivation for their existence. His understanding of class and politics suffices for the development of his Republic. Plato’s Republic is a utopian state, but it is by no means, as many have been mistaken in their estimation of it, a unique concept. Plato’s universalism and definition of flux owe themselves to the thought of Heraclitus, and his admiration of asceticism and defence are, by his own admission, qualities unique to Spartan culture. The theoretical aspect of this formula is embedded in Euclidean geometry, with a particular emphasis given to symmetry; hence Plato’s ability to resist change. The Republic is already perfect; any further change is a negative. It is unquestionable and unalterable in its finality. This is Popper’s bone of contention: piecemeal social engineering is natural, utopian engineering is not. Plato has no illusions about the imperfection of human culture, but the Republic on its own terms is a flawless construct; it therefore supersedes and tames the baser attitudes of the undesirable enclaves that live in it. The classes are categorically distributed according to their virtues and desires. By stratifying society in such a way, Plato hoped to remove the corruptive elements of self-interest and political upheaval. To Popper, this brand of social engineering is as absurd as it is dangerous. Popper’s interpretation of Plato’s closed society is the essence of his critique against historicism and a so-called perfect society.Given that Plato and Hegel are distanced by 2000 years of history, it may well appear that Popper’s undertaking of establishing intellectual continuity between the two is as ambitious as it is unlikely, but the enduring qualities of Plato’s epistemology lie in the roots of Aristotelian philosophy. Platonism was briefly rehabilitated in the neo-Platonist movement in Ancient Rome, but his body of work did not have the same effect upon Christians and the Middle Ages the way Aristotle did. Of course, Aristotle was a student of Plato in Ancient Greece, and he impressed his master’s more admirable traits; that is, his treatment of aesthetics, logic and reason, if not his political and moral philosophy. Aristotle, too, synthesized his formula for a stable polity, which manifested in his sexpartite model. Continuing that great Grecian tradition of the dialectic, Aristotle juxtaposed the valuable systems of governance against their natural evils, for example: Kingship is virtuous, a dictatorship is not; Politeia is admirable, democracy is corrupt. Once the optimal system of rulership has been established, it is an ultimate good. Proceeding from this theme, Hegel wrests Platonism from ancient history and distils it through the filter of 19th century governance. How do we qualify the best system, Hegel asks? What it is it shall be. The validity of ruling lies in its actual sources and operations, not in its normative aims. This forms of the basis of what’s known as moral positivism. This is deeply troubling, as this brand of moral positivism is an exercise in power enjoyed by the few, the privileged, and the ruling. This state of mind allows for a preponderance of the worst elements of state abuse, particularly the emphasis on war among as nations, which Hegel warmly endorses as an endearing trait of a nation’s character. Hegel’s historicist outputs assume a similar form to that of Marx, namely the dialectical triad – a crude plagiarism of Kant’s brilliant work on reason. With the totalitarian logic laid down by Plato and refined by the state philosopher Hegel, Popper brings us to the final prophet of historicism: Marx.Marx, Popper claims, is unusual in the annals of the historicist school of thinking. It is undoubtedly true that Marx was a classical adherent of its core tendencies, and he, like Plato and Hegel, prophesied that the essence and meaning of human existence could be traced back to a single concept, but he was, unlike his predecessors, his own man. While Plato and Hegel were unequivocally servants to and expositors of formal power, Marx was quite the opposite. For Marx the terminus of capitalism was nearing its end; it had governed in human affairs since time immemorial and was the driving force behind the impression of power and oppression of the masses. Despite his persona sharing the same lofty historical quarters as Smith, Ricardo and Keynes, Marx’s economism was thin gruel. This was particularly self-evident to Lenin, who declared that proceeding from a Marxian framework would be a road to nowhere. Marx’s system of economics was polemical and reactionary, but despite his epistemological contributions to the social sciences, Marx had not developed a logically consistent manifesto of economics. His theory on market value, which included production and consumption, was terribly inconsistent, as was his critique of labour and consumption. It is true, Popper notes, that Marx’s critique of industry and capitalism more broadly had substance, but his alternatives were wrought with errors of empiricism and historicism. The factory line was microcosmic in its composition of all that was wrong in civilization, and Marx propped up the perils of the downtrodden working class as victims, but, eventually, beneficiaries. Far from being the scourge of mankind and freedom, as conservative populists contend, he was an intelligent and intuitive man, but a terribly misguided one. Unlike his forefathers, Marx believed in the common will of the people; a quality Popper obviously admired in him.The Open Society and its Enemies is, in short, an absolute masterwork written by an eminently moral thinker. Please buy this book.

⭐REVIEW: Karl Popper, “The Open Society and its Enemies” (Princeton, 1994) William Manson, Ph.D. (Columbia University) I’m restricting my commentary to vol. 1, “The Spell of Plato.” I admittedly approached this book with some skepticism about Popper’s “open” vs. “closed” dichotomy (distinguished, quite vaguely, in Chapter 10). Written in the early 1940s, the book is clearly a period-piece, with some useful things to say about “utopian”-totalitarianism and the racialistic nationalism which often accompanied it (as in Nazi Germany). But, in my opinion, his choice to present Plato’s totalitarian political schema as a definitive blueprint for later, 20th century collectivist-nationalistic dictatorships is ill-conceived. Yes, Plato advocated “racial breeding,” total indoctrination (thought-control), a rigid caste system, and so forth. But Popper is insufficiently historicist: after all, Plato’s politics was ultimately based on a peculiarly Orphic-Pythagorean metaphysics, in which a timeless, purified, perfectly designed State would mirror the absolute Forms and Ideas thought to be the ultimate reality. Another major failing, I think, is Popper’s sloppy use of the already-vague term “tribalism”–to subsume any manifestations of ethnic-identification, shared culture, “nationalism,” “group egoism,” etc. Anthropologists could have provided the much-needed concept of “ethnocentrism”–and how, for instance, even the slave-holding, “democratic” Athenians Popper so admires glaringly exhibited it. But I couldn’t find a single reference to the concept in the book. Popper fulminates endlessly about the dangerous, irrational “tribalism” of Sparta–which he contrasts to the Athenian imperialism which may have positively brought “democracy” to benighted tribalists. (The slaughtered people of the island of Melos didn’t think so.) His idealization of the imperialist politician Pericles is unwarranted–and, in praising Athenian “democracy,” Popper only cursorily acknowledges that its economy was based on slavery. Popper deems Pericles’ restriction of citizenship (in 451 B.C.) to those born of Athenian parents as a “dubious concession to the popular tribal instincts” (p. 570 n.16), but he conspicuously omits any questioning of the exclusion of women (as well as that of the majority-population, who were slaves, i.e., non-Greek “barbarians”). From Plato, he argues, it was then only a short leap to Rousseau’s “general will” (and thus Robespierre, etc.). But what of the centuries-old power struggles between European landed aristocracies and the Court–with monarchs invariably legitimating their power as a “divine right” (further cemented with monotheism, another aspect which he neglects)? And “divine” emperors often ruled over urbanized polyglot populations (cities being regional marketplaces). Maybe I missed something, but I couldn’t even find any clear elaboration of his vaunted “open society” concept. One would think that such cosmopolitanism would require such features as de-centralized political power, literacy and libraries, and polytheism in preference to monotheism–none of which he discusses at any length. But my major criticism, perhaps, is his relative lack of substantiating historical detail–compared to, say, the great sociologists like Max Weber. Classical sociologists (Tonnies, Simmel, Durkheim) are barely mentioned at all. Yet their incisive theories far surpass Popper on the issues of Gemeinschaft, social order, national solidarity, and “modernity.” Moreover, as Popper was writing this tome around 1940, Frankfurt school social-psychological thinkers had already developed quite penetrating theories regarding fascism, totalitarianism, and “the authoritarian personality” (see, for example, the impressive historical analysis in Erich Fromm’s “Escape From Freedom,” 1941). In his unremitting hatred for “tribal” (cultural) irrationalism, Popper also seems to overlook the irrational (cultural) roots of modern capitalism, as brilliantly delineated by Max Weber in his classic “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism” (1905). Popper’s “closed society” is vigilantly nationalistic, with narrow-minded, sanctified dogma and stringent boundaries against outside influences (i.e., “autarky”–economic “protectionism”). Yet, certainly in today’s world, near-totalitarian societies may be the big players in world trade–thanks in part to the paramount power of trans-national corporations. The pre-Gorbachev Soviet Union, “closed” in many respects, nonetheless claimed in principle to have transcended ethnic loyalties on behalf of a universalizing economic “freedom.” As to Popper’s overall schema and style, I was disappointed. I had expected more scholarly rigor–with many in-text quotations from leading scholars to bolster his arguments. Instead, despite the end-notes, the book reads like a somewhat discursive lecture–strong, preconceived arguments, with insufficient substantiation. Finally, despite a display of massive erudition, his opinionated writing style–with its unfortunate penchant for vague, simplistic dichotomies (e.g., “tribalism” vs. “democracy”)–almost conveys the impression of a second-rate proselytizer rather than a first-rate scholar and thinker.

⭐I am no expert of philosophy or economics and so I am unsure of my right to label anything a classic. That said, I found this work really fascinating because it cogently brought together views about ethics, individualism, science and politics in a way that was novel and relevant to me.How do Plato’s views of collectivism and a political “Republic” contrast with the method of questioning and individual responsibility espoused by Socrates?How does Kant’s system of duty contrast with Hugel’s dialectics?Why is Marx simultaneously relevant and yet utterly wrong judged on bases he could hardly object to as a truly innovative social scientist?How do these philosophies relate to each other and social and human progress through time?If these questions and a really heartfelt defense of western liberalism plus a logical argument against relativistic philosophical thinking are questions and themes of interest then I would recommend the book. Warning: the initial chapters are fundamental but I found them to be a bit dense.

⭐This book is suffused with brilliant arguments, beautiful prose, and Popper’s desire for a better world. It is long, but worth the read.

⭐I’m sorry but this is not the ONE-Volume edition it’s just the volume ONE. for this I could have paid less somewhere else

⭐Excellent !

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