The Open Society and Its Enemies (Princeton Classics)

by Karl Popper

The future depends on ourselves, and we do not depend on any historical necessity. There are, however, influential social philosophies which hold the opposite view. They claim that everybody tries to use his brains to predict impending events; that it is certainly legitimate for a strategist to try to foresee the outcome of a battle; and that the boundaries between such a prediction and more sweeping historical prophecies are fluid. They assert that it is the task of science in general to make predictions, or rather, to improve upon our everyday predictions, and to put them upon a more secure basis; and that it is, in particular, the task of the social sciences to furnish us with long-term historical prophecies. They also believe that they have discovered laws of history which enable them to prophesy the course of historical events. The various social philosophies which raise claims of this kind, I have grouped together under the name historicism.

Why do all these social philosophies support the revolt against civilization? And what is the secret of their popularity? Why do they attract and seduce so many intellectuals? I am inclined to think that the reason is that they give expression to a deepfelt dissatisfaction with a world which does not, and cannot, live up to our moral ideals and to our dreams of perfection. The tendency of historicism (and of related views) to support the revolt against civilization may be due to the fact that historicism itself is, largely, a reaction against the strain of our civilization and its demand for personal responsibility.

Personal relationships of a new kind can arise where they can be freely entered into, instead of being determined by the accidents of birth; and with this, a new individualism arises. Similarly, spiritual bonds can play a major rôle where the biological or physical bonds are weakened; etc. However this may be, our example, I hope, will have made plain what is meant by a more abstract society in contradistinction to a more concrete or real social group; and it will have made it clear that our modern open societies function largely by way of abstract relations, such as exchange or co-operation. (It is the analysis of these abstract relations with which modern social theory, such as economic theory, is mainly concerned. This point has not been understood by many sociologists, such as Durkheim, who never gave up the dogmatic belief that society must be analysed in terms of real social groups.)

The rise of philosophy itself can be interpreted, I think, as a response to the breakdown of the closed society and its magical beliefs. It is an attempt to replace the lost magical faith by a rational faith; it modifies the tradition of passing on a theory or a myth by founding a new tradition—the tradition of challenging theories and myths and of critically discussing them38.

The first to become conscious of the social revolution and the struggle of classes was Heraclitus. How he rationalized his feeling of drift by developing the first anti-democratic ideology and the first historicist philosophy of change and destiny, has been described in the second chapter of this book. Heraclitus was the first conscious enemy of the open society.

(Democrats who do not see the difference between a friendly and a hostile criticism of democracy are themselves imbued with the totalitarian spirit. Totalitarianism, of course, cannot consider any criticism as friendly, since every criticism of such an authority must challenge the principle of authority itself.)

But a philosophy which makes man the centre of its interest began only with Protagoras. And the belief that there is nothing more important in our life than other individual men, the appeal to men to respect one another and themselves, appears to be due to Socrates. Burnet has stressed44 that it was Socrates who created the conception of the soul, a conception which had such an immense influence upon our civilization. I believe that there is much in this view, although I feel that its formulation may be misleading, especially the use of the term ‘soul’; for Socrates seems to have kept away from metaphysical theories as much as he could. His appeal was a moral appeal, and his theory of individuality (or of the ‘soul’, if this word is preferred) is, I think, a moral and not a metaphysical doctrine.

First we are told by Plato that Socrates’ attack upon the democratic politicians of his time was carried out partly with the purpose of exposing the selfishness and lust for power of the hypocritical flatterers of the people, more particularly, of the young aristocrats who posed as democrats, but who looked upon the people as mere instruments of their lust for power46.

Our dream of heaven cannot be realized on earth. Once we begin to rely upon our reason, and to use our powers of criticism, once we feel the call of personal responsibilities, and with it, the responsibility of helping to advance knowledge, we cannot return to a state of implicit submission to tribal magic. For those who have eaten of the tree of knowledge, paradise is lost. The more we try to return to the heroic age of tribalism, the more surely do we arrive at the Inquisition, at the Secret Police, and at a romanticized gangsterism. Beginning with the suppression of reason and truth, we must end with the most brutal and violent destruction of all that is human71. There is no return to a harmonious state of nature. If we turn back, then we must go the whole way—we must return to the beasts.

Aristotle’s thought is entirely dominated by Plato’s. Somewhat grudgingly, he followed his great teacher as closely as his temperament permitted, not only in his general political outlook but practically everywhere. So he endorsed, and systematized, Plato’s naturalistic theory of slavery3 : ‘Some men are by nature free, and others slaves; and for the latter, slavery is fitting as well as just … A man who is by nature not his own, but another’s, is by nature a slave … Hellenes do not like to call themselves slaves, but confine this term to barbarians … The slave is totally devoid of any faculty of reasoning’, while free women have just a very little of it.

Aristotle, who was a historian of the more encyclopædic type, made no direct contribution to historicism. He adhered to a more restricted version of Plato’s theory that floods and other recurring catastrophes destroy the human race from time to time, leaving only a few survivors.20 But he does not seem, apart from this, to have interested himself in the problem of historical trends. In spite of this fact, it may be shown here how his theory of change lends itself to historicist interpretations, and that it contains all the elements needed for elaborating a grandiose historicist philosophy.

Hegel sees clearly, to a new justification of the theory of slavery. For self-assertion means25, in so far as one’s relations to others are concerned, the attempt to dominate them. Indeed, Hegel points out that all personal relations can thus be reduced to the fundamental relation of master and slave, of domination and submission. Each must strive to assert and prove himself, and he who has not the nature, the courage, and the general capacity for preserving his independence, must be reduced to servitude. This charming theory of personal relations has, of course, its counterpart in Hegel’s theory of international relations. Nations must assert themselves on the Stage of History; it is their duty to attempt the domination of the World.

The chief danger to our philosophy, apart from laziness and woolliness, is scholasticism, … which is treating what is vague as if it were precise … F. P. RAMSEY.

And it is the most important source of Aristotle’s regrettably still prevailing intellectual influence, of all that verbal and empty scholasticism that haunts not only the Middle Ages, but our own contemporary philosophy; for even a philosophy as recent as that of L. Wittgenstein26 suffers, as we shall see, from this influence.

But this view of scientific method means34 that in science there is no ‘knowledge’, in the sense in which Plato and Aristotle understood the word, in the sense which implies finality; in science, we never have sufficient reason for the belief that we have attained the truth. What we usually call ‘scientific knowledge’ is, as a rule, not knowledge in this sense, but rather information regarding the various competing hypotheses and the way in which they have stood up to various tests; it is, using the language of Plato and Aristotle, information concerning the latest, and the best tested, scientific ‘opinion’. This view means, furthermore, that we have no proofs in science (excepting, of course, pure mathematics and logic). In the empirical sciences, which alone can furnish us with information about the world we live in, proofs do not occur, if we mean by ‘proof’ an argument which establishes once and for ever the truth of a theory.

‘In so far as scientific statements refer to the world of experience, they must be refutable; and, in so far as they are irrefutable, they do not refer to the world of experience.’ But although proof does not play any part in the empirical sciences, argument still does36; indeed, its part is at least as important as that played by observation and experiment.

Aristotle held with Plato that we possess a faculty, intellectual intuition, by which we can visualize essences and find out which definition is the correct one, and many modern essentialists have repeated this doctrine. Other philosophers, following Kant, maintain that we do not possess anything of the sort.

Since Aristotle, it has become widely known that one cannot prove all statements, and that an attempt to do so would break down because it would lead only to an infinite regression of proofs. But neither he45 nor, apparently, a great many modern writers seem to realize that the analogous attempt to define the meaning of all our terms must, in the same way, lead to an infinite regression of definitions.

For since we cannot demand that all the defining terms should be defined in their turn, a clever politician or philosopher could easily satisfy the demand for definitions. If asked what he means by ‘democracy’, for example, he could say ‘the rule of the general will’ or ‘the rule of the spirit of the people’; and since he has now given a definition, and so satisfied the highest standards of precision, nobody will dare to criticize him any longer. And, indeed, how could he be criticized, since the demand that ‘rule’ or ‘people’ or ‘will’ or ‘spirit’ should be defined in their turn, puts us well on the way to an infinite regression so that everybody would hesitate to raise it?

The situation seems to be this. Aristotelianism and related philosophies have told us for such a long time how important it is to get a precise knowledge of the meaning of our terms that we are all inclined to believe it. And we continue to cling to this creed in spite of the unquestionable fact that philosophy, which for twenty centuries has worried about the meaning of its terms, is not only full of verbalism but also appallingly vague and ambiguous, while a science like physics which worries hardly at all about terms and their meaning, but about facts instead, has achieved great precision. This, surely, should be taken as indicating that, under Aristotelian influence, the importance of the meaning of terms has been grossly exaggerated. But I think that it indicates even more. For not only does this concentration on the problem of meaning fail to establish precision; it is itself the main source of vagueness, ambiguity, and confusion.

However this may be, it can hardly be doubted that with Justinian’s persecution of non-Christians, heretics, and philosophers (A.D. 529), the dark ages began. The Church followed in the wake of Platonic-Aristotelian totalitarianism, a development that culminated in the Inquisition.

The terms ‘Epicureanism’, ‘materialism’, and ‘empiricism’, that is to say, the philosophy of Democritus, one of the greatest of the Great Generation, became in this way the synonyms of wickedness, and the tribal Idealism of Plato and Aristotle was exalted as a kind of Christianity before Christ. Indeed, this is the source of the immense authority of Plato and Aristotle, even in our own day, that their philosophy was adopted by medieval authoritarianism.

‘The heating up of sounding bodies … is heat … together with sound.’ The question arises whether Hegel deceived himself, hypnotized by his own inspiring jargon, or whether he boldly set out to deceive and bewitch others. I am satisfied that the latter was the case, especially in view of what Hegel wrote in one of his letters. In this letter, dated a few years before the publication of his Philosophy of Nature, Hegel referred to another Philosophy of Nature, written by his former friend Schelling:

In spite of all this it seems improbable that Hegel would ever have become the most influential figure in German philosophy without the authority of the Prussian state behind him. As it happened, he became the first official philosopher of Prussianism, appointed in the period of feudal ‘restoration’ after the Napoleonic wars.

Hegel’s influence, and especially that of his cant, is still very powerful in moral and social philosophy and in the social and political sciences (with the sole exception of economics). Especially the philosophers of history, of politics, and of education are still to a very large extent under its sway. In politics, this is shown most drastically by the fact that the Marxist extreme left wing, as well as the conservative centre, and the fascist extreme right, all base their political philosophies on Hegel; the left wing replaces the war of nations which appears in Hegel’s historicist scheme by the war of classes, the extreme right replaces it by the war of races; but both follow him more or less consciously. (The conservative centre is as a rule less conscious of its indebtedness to Hegel.)

For some reason, philosophers have kept around themselves, even in our day, something of the atmosphere of the magician. Philosophy is considered as a strange and abstruse kind of thing, dealing with those mysteries with which religion deals, but not in a way which can be ‘revealed unto babes’ or to common people; it is considered to be too profound for that, and to be the religion and theology of the intellectuals, of the learned and wise. Hegelianism fits these views admirably; it is exactly what this kind of popular superstition supposes philosophy to be. It knows all about everything. It has a ready answer to every question. And indeed, who can be sure that the answer is not true?

The fight for the open society began again only with the ideas of 1789; and the feudal monarchies soon experienced the seriousness of this danger. When in 1815 the reactionary party began to resume its power in Prussia, it found itself in dire need of an ideology. Hegel was appointed to meet this demand, and he did so by reviving the ideas of the first great enemies of the open society, Heraclitus, Plato, and Aristotle.

The historical significance of Hegel may be seen in the fact that he represents the ‘missing link’, as it were, between Plato and the modern form of totalitarianism. Most of the modern totalitarians are quite unaware that their ideas can be traced back to Plato. But many know of their indebtedness to Hegel, and all of them have been brought up in the close atmosphere of Hegelianism. They have been taught to worship the state, history, and the nation.

These passages show that Hegel’s radical collectivism depends as much on Plato as it depends on Frederick William III, king of Prussia in the critical period during and after the French Revolution. Their doctrine is that the state is everything, and the individual nothing; for he owes everything to the state, his physical as well as his spiritual existence. This is the message of Plato, of Frederick William’s Prussianism, and of Hegel. ‘The Universal is to be found in the State’, Hegel writes8. ‘The State is the Divine Idea as it exists on earth … We must therefore worship the State as the manifestation of the Divine on earth, and consider that, if it is difficult to comprehend Nature, it is infinitely harder to grasp the Essence of the State … The State is the march of God through the world … The State must be comprehended as an organism … To the complete State belongs, essentially, consciousness and thought. The State knows what it wills … The State is real; and … true reality is necessary. What is real is eternally necessary … The State … exists for its own sake … The State is the actually existing, realized moral life.’ This selection of utterances may suffice to show Hegel’s Platonism and his insistence upon the absolute moral authority of the state, which overrules all personal morality, all conscience. It is, of course, a bombastic and hysterical Platonism, but this only makes more obvious the fact that it links Platonism with modern totalitarianism.

The Christian knows that it is strictly impossible for him to live except in sin … Therefore he steers clear of the pettiness of moral hair-splitting … An ethicized Christianity is a counter-Christianity through and through … God has made this world perishable, it is doomed to destruction. May it, then, go to the dogs according to destiny! Men who imagine themselves capable of making it better, who want to create a “higher” morality, are starting a ridiculous petty revolt against God … The hope of Heaven does not mean the expectation of a happiness of the blessed; it means obedience and War-Comradeship.’ (The return to the tribe.)

But fundamentally, it is necessary to keep in mind the fact that it is a very dubious argument in favour of a certain interpretation that it can be easily applied, and that it explains all we know; for only if we can look out for counter examples can we test a theory. (This point is nearly always overlooked by the admirers of the various ‘unveiling philosophies’, especially by the psycho-, socio-, and historio-analysts; they are often seduced by the ease with which their theories can be applied everywhere.)

For since each generation has its own troubles and problems, and therefore its own interests and its own point of view, it follows that each generation has a right to look upon and re-interpret history in its own way, which is complementary to that of previous generations. After all, we study history because we are interested in it9, and perhaps because we wish to learn something about our own problems. But history can serve neither of these two purposes if, under the influence of an inapplicable idea of objectivity, we hesitate to present historical problems from our point of view.

The main thing is to be conscious of one’s point of view, and critical, that is to say, to avoid, as far as this is possible, unconscious and therefore uncritical bias in the presentation of the facts.

We want to know how our troubles are related to the past, and we want to see the line along which we may progress towards the solution of what we feel, and what we choose, to be our main tasks. It is this need which, if not answered by rational and fair means, produces historicist interpretations. Under its pressure the historicist substitutes for a rational question: ‘What are we to choose as our most urgent problems, how did they arise, and along what roads may we proceed to solve them?’

‘Do no harm’ (and, therefore, ‘give the young what they most urgently need, in order to become independent of us, and to be able to choose for themselves’) would be a very worthy aim for our educational system, and one whose realization is somewhat remote, even though it sounds modest. Instead, ‘higher’ aims are the fashion, aims which are typically romantic and indeed nonsensical, such as ‘the full development of the personality’. It is under the influence of such romantic ideas that individualism is still identified with egoism, as it was by Plato, and altruism with collectivism (i.e. with the substitution of group egoism for the individualist egoism).

We shall become ‘leading actors’, heroes on the Stage of History; for a small risk we shall gain great rewards. This is the dubious morality of a period in which only a tiny minority counted, and in which nobody cared for the common people. It is the morality of those who, being political or intellectual aristocrats, have a chance of getting into the textbooks of history. It cannot possibly be the morality of those who favour justice and equalitarianism; for historical fame cannot be just, and it can be attained only by a very few. The countless number of men who are just as worthy, or worthier, will always be forgotten.

It may be said that this new way of knowing is too abstract and too sophisticated to replace the loss of authoritarian religion. This may be true. But we must not underrate the power of the intellect and the intellectuals. It was the intellectuals—the ‘second-hand dealers in ideas’, as F. A. Hayek calls them—who spread relativism, nihilism, and intellectual despair. There is no reason why some intellectuals—some more enlightened intellectuals—should not eventually succeed in spreading the good news that the nihilist ado was indeed about nothing.

So each of us sees his gods, and his world, from his own point of view, according to his tradition and his upbringing; and none of us is exempt from this subjective bias. This argument has been developed in various ways; and it has been argued that our race, or our nationality, or our historical background, or our historical period, or our class interest, or our social habitat, or our language, or our personal background knowledge, is an insurmountable, or an almost insurmountable, barrier to objectivity. The facts on which this argument is based must be admitted; and indeed, we can never rid ourselves of bias.

It should not be forgotten that I looked upon my book as my war effort: believing as I did in the responsibility of Hegel and the Hegelians for much of what happened in Germany, I felt that it was my task, as a philosopher, to show that this philosophy was a pseudo-philosophy.

I think most Hegelians will admit that one of the fundamental motives and intentions of Hegel’s philosophy is precisely to replace and ‘transcend’ the dualistic view of facts and standards which had been presented by Kant, and which was the philosophical basis of the idea of liberalism and of social reform.

Now Hegel’s argument was, fundamentally, the one I stated (and criticized) here in the preceding section—although Hegel presented it in a surpassingly vague, unclear, and specious form. Moreover, I contend that this identity philosophy (despite some ‘progressivist’ suggestions, and some mild expressions of sympathy with various ‘progressive’ movements which it contained) played a major role in the downfall of the liberal movement in Germany; a movement which, under the influence of Kant’s philosophy, had produced such important liberal thinkers as Schiller and Wilhelm von Humboldt, and such important works as Humboldt’s Essay towards the Determination of the Limits of the Powers of the State.

This is my first and fundamental accusation. My second accusation, closely connected with the first, is that Hegel’s identity philosophy, by contributing to historicism and to an identification of might and right, encouraged totalitarian modes of thought.

Schools (especially Universities) have retained certain aspects of tribalism ever since. But we must think not only of their emblems, or of the Old School Tie with all its social implications of caste, etc., but also of the patriarchal and authoritarian character of so many schools. It was not just an accident that Plato, when he had failed to re-establish tribalism, founded a school instead; nor is it an accident that schools are so often bastions of reaction, and school teachers dictators in pocket edition.