The Open Society and Its Enemies: The Spell of Plato by Karl Popper

Author:Karl Popper [Popper, Karl]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General, Medical, Social Science, Sociology, Philosophy, Political Science, Ancient & Classical, History & Surveys, Social, Social Sciences - Philosophy, Social Sciences
ISBN: 9780691019680
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 1969-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

It is an issue which we must face squarely, hard though it may be for us to do so. If we dream of a return to our childhood, if we are tempted to rely on others and so be happy, if we turn back from the task of carrying our cross, the cross of humaneness, of reason, of responsibility, if we lose courage and flinch from the strain, then we must try to fortify ourselves with a clear understanding of the simple decision before us. We can return to the beasts. But if we wish to remain human, then there is only one way, the way into the open society. We must go on into the unknown, courageously, using what reason we have, to plan for security and freedom.

NOTES

GENERAL REMARKS. The text of the book is self-contained and may be read without these Notes. However, a considerable amount of material which is likely to interest all readers of the book will be found here, as well as some references and controversies which may not be of general interest. Readers who wish to consult the Notes for the sake of this material may find it convenient first to read without interruption through the text of a chapter, and then to turn to the Notes.

I wish to apologize for the perhaps excessive number of cross references which have been included for the benefit of those readers who take a special interest in one or the other of the side issues touched upon (such as Plato's preoccupation with racialism, or the Socratic Problem). Knowing that war conditions would make it impossible for me to read the proofs, I decided to refer not to pages but to note numbers. Accordingly, references to the text have been indicated by notes such as : * cp. text to note 24 to chapter 3 ', etc. War conditions also restricted library facilities, making it impossible for me to obtain a number of books, some recent and some not, which would have been consulted in normal circumstances.

NOTE TO THE INTRODUCTION

The terms * open society ' and ' closed society ' were first used, to my knowledge, by Henri Bergson, in Two Sources of Morality and Religion (Engl. cd., I 935)- I n spite of a considerable difference (due to a fundamentally different approach to nearly every problem of philosophy) between Bergson's way of using these terms and mine, there is a certain similarity also, which I wish to acknowledge. (Cp. Bergsoii's characterization of the closed society, op. cit., p, 229, as * human society fresh from the hands of nature'.) The main difference, however, is this. My terms indicate, as it were, an intellectualist distinction ; the closed society is characterized by the 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. Bergson, on the other hand, has a kind of religious distinction in mind.

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