The Open Society and Its Enemies

Trying to make sense of Karl Popper: The Open Society and its Enemies. More on reddit.com

My view is that this book is an example of what happens when people from one area try to work in another area without bothering to read up on the relevant literature in the new area. Popper was a celebrated philosopher of science who couldn't recognize the teaching of Plato if it came up to him and punched him in the face. Here is what his contemporary (Eric Voegelin, himself a noted critic of twentieth century totalitarianism) said about the book: I feel completely justified in saying without reservation that this book is impudent, dilettantish crap. Every single sentence is a scandal, but it is still possible to lift out a few main annoyances. The expressions "closed [society]" and "open society" are taken from Bergson's Deux Sources. Without explaining the difficulties that induced Bergson to create these concepts, Popper takes the terms because they sound good to him; [he] comments in passing that in Bergson they had a "religious" meaning; but that he will use the concept of the open society closer to Graham Wallas's "great society" or that of Walter Lippmann. Perhaps I am oversensitive about such things, but I do not believe that respectable philosophers such as Bergson develop their concepts for the sole purpose that the coffeehouse scum might have something to botch. There also arises the relevant problem: if Bergson's theory of open society is philosophically and historically tenable (which I in fact believe), then Popper's idea of the open society is ideological rubbish. For this reason alone, he should have discussed the problem with all the possible care. 2. The impertinent disregard for the achievements in his particular problem area, which makes itself evident with respect to Bergson, runs through the whole work. When one reads the deliberations on Plato or Hegel, one has the impression that Popper is quite unfamiliar with the literature on the subject - even though he occasionally cites an author. In some cases, for example Hegel, I would believe that he has never seen a work like Rosenzweig's Hegel and the State. In other cases, where he cites works without appearing to have perceived their contents, another factor is added: 3. Popper is philosophically so uncultured, so fully a primitive ideological brawler, that he is not able even approximately to reproduce correctly the contents of one page of Plato. Reading is of no use to him; he is too lacking in knowledge to understand what the author says. Through this emerge terrible things, as when he translates Hegel's "Germanic world" as "German world" and draws conclusions from this mistranslation regarding Hegel's German nationalist propaganda. 4. Popper engages in no textual analysis from which can be seen the author's intention; instead he carries the modern ideological cliches directly to the text, assuming that the text will deliver results in the sense of the cliches. It will be a special pleasure for you to hear that, for example, Plato experienced an evolution - from an early "humanitarian" period still recognizable in the Gorgias, to something else (I can't recall any more if "reactionary" or "authoritarian") in the Republic. Briefly and in sum: Popper's book is a scandal without extenuating circumstances; in its intellectual attitude it is the typical product of a failed intellectual; spiritually one would have to use expressions like rascally, impertinent, loutish; in terms of technical competence, as a piece in the history of thought, it is dillettantish, and as a result it is worthless. This is from a private letter to Leo Strauss, dated April 18, 1950. More on reddit.com

The only explanation that occurs to me is that Plato was held in higher regard in the late 1930s than he is today, and that Plato's version of historicism had not seriously been questioned before Popper came along, so Popper wanted to refute it thoroughly and convincingly. More on reddit.com

It would be best understood as a criticism of certain interpretations of Plato that existed at the time of his writing that may be the intellectual foundations of some totalitarian ways of thinking (so Popper claimed) rather than an accurate representation of Plato's thought.

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