Open society
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Open society (French: société ouverte) is a term coined by French philosopher Henri Bergson in 1932,[1][2] and describes a dynamic system inclined to moral universalism.[3] Bergson contrasted an open society with what he called a closed society, a closed system of law, morality or religion. Bergson suggests that if all traces of civilization were to disappear, the instincts of the closed society for including or excluding others would remain.[4]
The idea of an open society was further developed during
History
Popper saw the classical Greeks as initiating the slow transition from tribalism towards the open society, and as facing for the first time the strain imposed by the less personal group relations entailed thereby.[8]
Whereas tribalistic and
Popper argued that the ideas of individuality, criticism, and humanitarianism cannot be suppressed once people have become aware of them, and therefore that it is impossible to return to the closed society,[10] but at the same time recognized the continuing emotional pull of what he called "the lost group spirit of tribalism", as manifested for example in the totalitarianisms of the 20th century.[11]
While the period since Popper's study has undoubtedly been marked by the spread of the open society, this may be attributed less to Popper's advocacy and more to the role of the economic advances of late modernity.[12] Growth-based industrial societies require literacy, anonymity and social mobility from their members[13] — elements incompatible with much tradition-based behavior but demanding the ever-wider spread of the abstract social relations Georg Simmel saw as characterizing the metropolitan mental stance.[14]
Definition
Karl Popper defined the open society as one "in which an individual is confronted with personal decisions" as opposed to a "magical or tribal or collectivist society."[15]
He considered that only democracy provides an institutional mechanism for reform and leadership change without the need for bloodshed, revolution or coup d'état.[16]
Critical knowledge
Popper's concept of the open society is
Popper's theory that knowledge is provisional and fallible implies that society must be open to alternative points of view. An open society is associated with cultural and religious pluralism; it is always open to improvement because knowledge is never completed but always ongoing: "if we wish to remain human, then there is only one way, the way into the open society ... into the unknown, the uncertain and insecure".[19]
In the closed society, claims to certain knowledge and ultimate truth lead to the attempted imposition of one version of reality. Such a society is closed to freedom of thought. In contrast, in an open society each citizen needs to engage in critical thinking, which requires freedom of thought and expression and the cultural and legal institutions that can facilitate this.[17]
Further characteristics
Arguably however it was the tension between a traditional society and the new, more open space of the emerging polis which most fully marked classical Athens,[21] and Popper was very aware of the continuing emotional appeal of what he called "holism...longing for the lost unity of tribal life"[22] into the modern world.
Caveats
Investor and philanthropist
Popper however, did not identify the open society either with democracy or with
See also
- Civil inattention
- Freedom of information
- Liberal democracy
- Open–closed political spectrum
- Open business
- Open government
- Open Society Institute
- Open source governance
- Social equilibrium
- The Transparent Society
- The Wealth of Networks
References
- ^ • Henri Bergson ([1932] 1937). Les Deux Sources de la morale et de la religion, ch. I, pp. 1–103 and ch. IV, pp. 287–343. Félix Alcan.
• Translated as ([1935] 1977), The Two Sources of Morality and Religion Internet Archive (left or right arrow buttons select succeeding pages), pp. 18–27, 45–65, 229–234., trs., R. A. Audra and C. Brereton, with assistance of W. H. Carter. Macmillan press, Notre Dame. - ^ Leszek Kołakowski, Modernity on Endless Trial (1997), p. 162
- ^ Thomas Mautner (2005), 2nd ed. The Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy ["Open society" entry], p. 443.
- ^ Henri Bergson, The Two Sources of Morality and Religion, Macmillan, 1935, pp. 20–21.
- ^ K. R. Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, 2 vols. ([1945] 1966), 5th ed.
- ^ A. N. Wilson, Our Times (2008), pp. 17–18
- ^ K. R. Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, Volume One (1945), 1 and 174–175.
- ^ K. R. Popper, 1945:175–176
- ^ Popper, K., The Open Society and Its Enemies, Volume One (Routledge, 1945, reprint 2006), chapter 5, part III.
- ^ Popper, K., The Open Society and Its Enemies, Volume One (Routledge, 1945, reprint 2006), chapter 10, part VIII.
- ^ K. R. Popper, 1945:199–200
- ^ Wilson, p. 403
- ^ Ernest Gellner, Nationalism (1997), pp. 25–29
- ^ M. Hardt/K. Weeks, The Jameson Reader (2000), pp. 260–266
- ^ Popper, K., The Open Society and Its Enemies, Volume One (Routledge, 1945, reprint 2006), chapter 10, part I.
- ^ K. R. Popper, 1945:4
- ^ a b Soros, George, "The Age of Fallibility," Public Affairs (2006).
- ^ a b Popper, K., The Open Society and Its Enemies, Volume Two (Routledge, 1945, reprint 2006), chapters 23 and 24.
- ^ K. R. Popper, 1945:201
- ^ Thucydides, The History of the Peloponnesian War, Book II: Pericles' Funeral Oration.
- ^ J. Boardman et al., The Oxford History of the Classical World (1991), p. 232
- ^ K. R. Popper, 1945:80
- ^ Soros, George, Soros on Soros (John Wiley and Sons, 1995), page 33.
- ^ a b c d Soros, George, "From Karl Popper to Karl Rove – and Back", Project Syndicate (November 8, 2007).
- ^ I. C. Jarvie et al. eds., Popper's Open Society after fifty years (1999), pp. 43–46
Further reading
- R. B. Levinson, In Defence of Plato (1953)
- Liberalism as threat to the open society: Charles Arthur Willard. Liberalism and the Problem of Knowledge: A New Rhetoric for Modern Democracy, University of Chicago Press, 1996.
- Maurice Cornforth: The Open Philosophy and the Open Society: A Reply to Dr Karl Popper's Refutations of Marxism. New York: International Publishers (1968).
External links
- Media related to Open Society at Wikimedia Commons