This seems to raise an important question: What is freedom for in a liberal, open society? Historically, the West has appealed to metaphysics and religion for answers. Popper is aware of this question, and he gives an existentialist answer of the sort that Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, and others would make popular in the early 1950s. We must accept the “strain” of freedom, the existential tension that comes from knowing that we must decide for ourselves the ends our freedom is to serve. It is up to us to define the truths that we need. As Popper emphasizes in italics, “Although history has
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