The Open Society and Its Enemies

by Popper, Karl

• ISBN13: 9780691019727
• ISBN10: 069101972X
• Edition: 5th
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1971-02-01
• Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr

Summary

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. TheOpen Society and Its Enemieswas 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.

Table of Contents

The Rise Of Oracular Philosophy	1	(80)
The Aristotelian Roots of Hegelianism	1	(26)
Hegel and The New Tribalism	27	(54)
Marx's Method	81	(54)
Sociological Determinism	81	(8)
The Autonomy of Sociology	89	(11)
Economic Historicism	100	(11)
The Classes	111	(7)
The Legal and the Social System	118	(17)
Marx's Prophecy	135	(64)
The Coming of Socialism	135	(11)
The Social Revolution	146	(20)
Capitalism and Its Fate	166	(27)
An Evaluation	193	(6)
Marx's Ethics	199	(13)
The Moral Theory of Historicism	199	(13)
The Aftermath	212	(47)
The Sociology of Knowledge	212	(12)
Oracular Philosophy and the Revolt against Reason	224	(35)
Conclusion	259	(22)
Has History any Meaning?	259	(22)
Notes	281	(88)
Addenda (1961, 1965)	369	(28)
Index of Names	397	(8)
Index of Subjects	405