The Open Society and Its Enemies, Vol. 2: Hegel and Marx (Paperback)

by Sir Karl Raimund Popper (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review
'A brilliant polemic It remains the best intellectual defence of liberal democracy against know-it-all totalitarianism.' - The Economist

'A modern classic.' - The Independent

'This is a work of great interest and significance, stimulating and suggestive throughout. Dr Popper's virtues are manifold. He has a great fertility of ideas. Almost every sentence gives us something to think about.' - G.C. Field, Philosophy

A brilliant polemic It remains the best intellectual defence of liberal democracy against know-it-all totalitarianism. - The Economist

A modern classic. - The Independent

This is a work of great interest and significance, stimulating and suggestive throughout. Dr Poppers virtues are manifold. He has a great fertility of ideas. Almost every sentence gives us something to think about. - G.C. Field, Philosophy --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Description

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.

In the book, Popper condemned Plato, Marx, and Hegel as "holists" and "historicists"--a holist, according to Popper, believes that individuals are formed entirely by their social groups; historicists believe that social groups evolve according to internal principles that it is the intellectual's task to uncover. Popper, by contrast, held that social affairs are unpredictable, and argued vehemently against social engineering. He also sought to shift the focus of political philosophy away from questions about who ought to rule toward questions about how to minimize the damage done by the powerful. The book was an immediate sensation, and--though it has long been criticized for its portrayals of Plato, Marx, and Hegel--it has remained a landmark on the left and right alike for its defense of freedom and the spirit of critical inquiry.

Product Details

• Paperback: 432 pages
• Publisher: Princeton University Press; 5 Revised edition (February 1, 1971)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 069101972X
• ISBN-13: 978-0691019727
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #240,932 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

34 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars great liberal, no friend to dogmatic libertarians, January 29, 2002

By	R. Hutchinson "autonomeus" (a world ruled by fossil fuels and fossil minds) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Karl Popper stood against all forms of dogmatism. Popper's ideas were used for ideological purposes during the Cold War, and continue to be used today by libertarians and "conservatives" to advance ideas that Popper rejected. What Popper means by "The Open Society" is a society based on reflection and deliberation, not one based on "laws of supply and demand."

THE OPEN SOCIETY AND ITS ENEMIES is one of those books much more often cited than actually read, and upon examination there is much here that is quite surprising. For instance, though Popper is mainly critical of Marx, who he calls a "false prophet," he also says "[o]ne cannot do justice to Marx without recognizing his sincerity. His open-mindedness, his sense of facts, his distrust of verbiage, and especially of moralizing verbiage, made him one of the world's most influential fighters against hypocrisy and pharisaism." (82) He also notes "...how justified [Marx] was in his glowing protest against the hell of an unrestrained capitalism..." (185) And Popper devotes an entire chapter to *agreeing* with Marx's anti-psychologism, his sociological insight that "social existence determines consciousness." (Chapter 14, "The Autonomy of Sociology")

It is precisely in reference to the way in which Marx's prophesy of capitalism's demise failed to come true that Popper distinguishes himself as a flexible liberal and not a dogmatic libertarian. Because, he says, "[u]nrestrained capitalism is gone. Since the day of Marx, democratic interventionism has made immense advances..." (187) The living standards of the working majority were raised through democratic social reforms which included the 8-hour day, recognition of trade unions, women's suffrage, and much more. What Popper means by "the open society" is a democratic society in which citizens reflect and participate, not one in which people are subject to any iron external force, whether a dictator, a permanent bureaucracy, or the so-called "laws of supply and demand," which has nowadays been dubbed TINA -- There Is No Alternative to The Market, harsh and capricious though it may be. Popper says there IS an alternative, though we have to think, and fight, to bring it about. There is no need to submit to an abstraction such as The Free Market -- the very success of the postindustrial democracies is testimony to their success in democratic social engineering.

Popper's main critique of Marx is that he, like Plato, was a historicist who believed in a universal history of humanity. "Historicist" is not exactly an everyday epithet -- why did Popper see historicism as dangerous? According to Popper, there are but multiple histories of various aspects of human life, such as religion, art, and so forth. He objects to anyone believing they have the key to the future, whether that results in socialist dogmatism, or libertarian dogmatism, or any other form of teleology. Popper makes this incredibly timely observation about the tendency to treat the history of power politics as universal history -- "...[t]his is hardly better than to treat the history of embezzlement or of robbery or of poisoning as the history of mankind. For the history of power politics is nothing but the history of international crime and mass murder... This history is taught in schools, and some of the greatest criminals are extolled as its heroes." (270) Popper closes the book with rousing praise, not for blind patriotism, but for critical debate, rationalism, and pluralism as opposed to "monolithic social ends" (396).

38 of 45 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "deconstructing heidegger", July 20, 1999

By A Customer

"deconstructing heidegger"

Popper's attempt at saving the Western World, part II. After refuting Plato in part I -to many shocking and "a priori" intellectually suicidal already- Popper went one better yet in part II: taking on Heidegger and Hegel (amongst others), the German fuehrers of contemporary philosophical thinking. - Unprecedented impertinence, utter blasphemy. Well, he did it nevertheless and did it mercilessly, again. The philosophical establishment was not pleased. But the world at large, us, left with a much clearer picture about what kind of ideas we better NOT base our civic order, life and liberty on. Mankind owes Popper for his "open society" book(s). Some of the greatest stuff ever printed. Do your civic self, your community, a favor. Don't let the century expire without reading this, one of its, yes, "most important" books.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Popper's "war work" still speaks to us, June 23, 2000

By	Mark J. Ross (Carbondale, Colorado, USA) - See all my reviews

Karl Popper's two-volume tracing of the philosophical ancestry of 20th Century totalitarianism remains for me a marvelous work. As I spent several graduate school years in the company self-styled neo-Marxists and Maoist wannabees, Popper's courteous but radical (in the sense of getting at the roots) criticism of Marxist thought was my candle in the darkness. Now that my daughter reads Plato at St. John's College, I look forward to discussing Popper's ideas once again!