When beginning this series of blogs on political philosophy and theology, until recently, I deliberately skipped the most important single work in the Western Canon, Plato’s Republic. I did this because of the importance of the Republic for the thought of Karl R. Popper and his magisterial work, The Open Society and Its Enemies. [1] Even those who do not fully agree with Popper’s critique of Plato find his work meaningful. It has become one of the most critical books defending Enlightenment liberal democracy in the 20th Century. As a result, it has supporters on the political spectrum’s left and right.
Karl Popper
Karl Popper was born in 1902 in Vienna, Austria, to a family of Jewish origin. He was educated and taught in Austria until 1937, when like so many intellectuals, he was forced to flee Nazi Germany and its influence. In 1928, he received a Ph.D. in Philosophy. His doctoral dissertation, On the Problem of Method in the Psychology of Thinking, concerned the psychology of scientific thought and discovery. Popper was initially a philosopher of science. During and after the Second World War, his thinking turned to political philosophy, culminating in this 1945 book, The Open Society and Its Enemies.
Popper focuses much of his book on a refutation of Plato, but more importantly, on a refutation of the historicism and determinism evident in Hegel and Marx. Many scholars consider Popper’s work to be a complete refutation of the very foundations of both Nazism and Marxism. In the case of Marxism, he definitively refuted its claim to scientific status and its claim to reveal the course of political and economic history. In his mind, Plato, Hegel, and Marx represent a kind of historical determinism and ethnic tribalism that resulted in, among other things, the Nazi German state and Russian Communist Marxism, with all the human suffering that resulted.
What is an Open Society?
At the root of Popper’s work is the notion that liberal democracy presupposes an open society, whereas the thought of Plato, Hegel, Marx, and others presupposes a closed society. So, what is an “open society”? According to Popper open society is one in which people enjoy the maximum amount of political, economic, equality, and personal freedom (as in a democracy) as possible. [2] Furthermore, open societies function based on individual merit, not social status, race, religion, etc.
To speak of an “open society” is to assume the existence of another kind of society that might be called “closed.” What, then, is a “closed society?” If an open society is one in which the accomplishments of people allow them to achieve on their merits, a closed society is one in which there are significant barriers to human freedom. Those barriers might be race (as in some cultures where there is considerable discrimination), social status (as in societies where there exists a powerful social hierarchy), religion (as in communities with a religious or irreligious test for public office), and other restrictions on human flourishing.
In The Open Society and its Enemies, Popper identifies one particular type of closed society, which he calls “tribal.” Greek society was essentially racist and tribal, with the various Greek city-states consisting of essentially one group of people sharing a common history and set of traditions. Jewish society was similarly tribal by this definition. Plato often seems to be defending the superiority of Greek ideas and social forms on essentially what we would call a tribal basis. In particular, Plato appears to be supporting an early form of Greek aristocracy, a form of government in which his family had flourished.
More recently, beginning with Hegel and culminating in the Third Reich, Germany developed a politics of “race and blood” that led, among other matters, to the holocaust and the enslavement of much of Europe. Hegel, in particular, is identified as the source of a kind of German tribalism that ended up in the glorification of the Master Race. Hegel thought that nations should be coextensive with a single people, which is the basis from which Hitler developed his notion that the Aryan Race should constitute a single nation in Europe, led by Germany. [3] For Popper, such ideas are the hallmark of a closed society.
What is Historicism?
The feature of Plato, Hegel, and Marx that Popper finds most horrible is their tendency to suppose that there are “laws of history” or “forces of history” that determine national and personal destiny, as opposed to human history being determined by the concrete choices made by people. For Popper, the work of Plato, Hegel, Marx, and their followers is essentially authoritarian, leading to brutal and degrading regimes. One need only look at Nazi Germany or the various Communist states to see an element of truth in his words.
Readers of this blog will note that I have critiqued various American political figures, left and right, for using the phrase “right side of history.” When we claim that our political beliefs are “on the right side of history” and our enemies are “on the wrong side of history,” we essentially claim that our enemies act contrary to historical forces that determine history. We are implying that our political foes are retrograde for not understanding this fact. Perhaps most distressing is that such phrases as “the wrong side of history” are prejudicial and enable the one who uses them to avoid the concrete defense of their political agenda.
To reject the notion of deterministic laws of history is not to deny the importance of history for a society. Nor does a rejection of historicism, by Popper’s definition, involve a denial of the obvious fact that history and historical situations limit and, to some degree, direct human action. Just to give one current example, the level of indebtedness of Western democracies does not determine their future, but it does restrict specific future outcomes.
What is rejected by Popper is the notion that human choices do not count, that somehow above and beyond human decisions, there is something else, laws of history or some kind of divine predestination, which laws or decrees render human choice unimportant or irrelevant. On the contrary, the availability and importance of human choice—and the moral responsibility that goes with such choice—are central to Popper’s defense of the open society.
Glorification of War and Struggle and the Closed Society
One of the most compelling features of The Open Society and its Enemies is how Popper shows Hegel and Marx to be modern exponents of the theories of Heraclitus and his glorification of war and struggle as the final arbiter of human history. Fundamentally, Marx and Hegel both have an amoral view of government and politics. Success matters in politics, and whatever policies a state adopts are just if successful. [4] The belief that politics is exempt from morality applies within and within states. Among states, despite the role of diplomacy and agreement, the final arbiter is success, and success equates to success in conflict, including war, in the accomplishments of the grand objects of the state. [5]
It does not take much imagination to see that this view translates into the excesses of the Nazi, Communist, and other regimes. Increasingly the Western democracies, as the Christian consensus that formed their societies disintegrates, this amoral (one is tempted to say immoral”) view of politics and diplomacy prevails. If one asks why certain political groups and politicians view it proper to use violence, state-sponsored and otherwise, to gain their domestic political objectives, one needs to look no further than the philosophies of Hegel and Marx.
The Search for the Great Man (or Woman)
Like Nietzsche, Hegel glorifies the Great Individual who creates a change, new, and successful political system or structure by sheer force of will. Lenin was the result of this kind of thinking transmitted via Marx. A great man (or woman) is one who expresses the spirit (or will) of their age and thus strides through history successfully in their endeavors. Such “world-historical figures” are the engine of the spirit of the age in achieving its ends. [6]
From ancient times to the modern age, the destiny of most “world-historical figures” has been to bring untold suffering upon the human race. A long line of such figures, from Alexander the Great to Napoleon the Modern Age, turn out to be little more than petty tyrants who, through skill and luck, for a time stride across the stage of history
The Importance of Piecemeal Social Engineering.
One implication of a desire for an Open Society is recognizing that grand projects are to be disfavored and piecemeal change is to be favored. This rejection of grand designs is a tough lesson to learn in the modern world, where we frequently glorify massive social programs, the Great Society, and the like while ignoring small changes to improve lives. Increasingly, it is disfavored by right and left groups impatient for massive social change. The results of this failure of such ambitions lie all around us.
Practically, all societies are a mixture of open and closed, but some societies can be described as “open” and others as “closed.” In addition, all societies change over time, evolving new social institutions, cultural norms, and the like. Closed societies function so that an elite makes all such changes, be it members of an aristocracy, oligarchy, military junta, or members of a single authorized political party. In an open society, such changes are made by the free act of many individuals and groups piecemeal. In this sense, despite the alignment of adherents to the open society concept with radical leftist politics in America, the doctrine of Popper is essentially conservative in nature. He had seen the evils created by the Nazi and Russian regimes and the dangers of any form of totalitarianism.
Conclusion
Next week, the blog will focus almost entirely on Popper’s critique of Marx, who is both closer in time and more influential in current politics. This week has focused more on Hegel, whom Popper rejects in categorical terms. There are probably several reasons for this rejection. Most important is the connection Popper sees between the ideas of Hegel and the emergence of Naziism and the events of the Second World War, which was ongoing during the time his work was being written. Not so obvious is the likelihood that Popper is so violently opposed to Hegel because of his idealism, which is in fundamental opposition to Popper’s own materialistic view of human society, which makes him more open to Marx than to Hegel.
As a philosopher of science, Popper was familiar with Einstein’s theory of Relativity and one assumes somewhat familiar with Quantum theory. Interestingly, the implications of the latter do not seem to have penetrated his opposition to Hegel. One can expect too much of a philosopher, and it might well be too much to ask that Popper consider the implications of a non-material substratum to the visible universe on his ideas. I will take this up a bit at the end of next week. For now, it is enough to suggest that Popper defends a kind of Enlightenment program that is fundamentally impacted by a distinction between the human mind and inert matter—a distinction that may lead him astray in the end.
Copyright 2023, G. Christopher Scruggs, All Rights Reserved
[1] Karl Popper, The Open Society and its Enemies (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994).
[2] Id, at 262.
[3] Id, at 262.
[4] Id, at 277.
[5] Id, at 279.
[6] Id, at 283