The Open Society and Its Enemies by K. R.

Popper
Review by: Robert Strausz-Hup
Philosophy of Science, Vol. 15, No. 3 (Jul., 1948), pp. 269-271
Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Philosophy of Science Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/185089 .
Accessed: 15/07/2014 04:33
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
.
The University of Chicago Press and Philosophy of Science Association are collaborating with JSTOR to
digitize, preserve and extend access to Philosophy of Science.
http://www.jstor.org
This content downloaded from 197.255.75.90 on Tue, 15 Jul 2014 04:33:27 AM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
BOOK REVIEWS
The Open Society and Its Enemies. By K. R. POPPER. Roetledge, London,
2 Vol. In this book Mr. Popper, Reader in Logic and Scientific Method in the
University of London, examines the nature and origines of a vast and labyrinthine
system which he terms "historicism." This porte-manteau term he applies to
any view claiming that human society, by its nature and not by human will or by
variable conditions, is predetermined and that, therefore, necessary laws aTnd
patterns governing inevitable future developments can be found in history.
Mr. Popper's protest-and he protests vehemently albeit retaining a steady grip
on the controls of his impressive scholarly apparatus-is directed not merely
against Hegelianism at its ebb tide, but against a millenary philosophy of com-
plex and insidious affinities, which has imprisoned the political thought of the
West. The targets of Mr. Popper's attack are many. His blows, effective as
they are against the selected specimen of "oracular philosophy," only serve to
reveal the toughness and ubiquity of the foe, transcendental idealism-whatever
his ingenious trappings in time.
One half of the study assays Plato's philosophy for its totalitarian contents
and traces Platonic influences from their origins to the threshold of modernity.
The other half consists of a telescoped treatment of Aristotle (with an aside on
the essentialist method of Definition), a more lengthy critique of Hegel's platon-
izing worship (with acid digressions on the Organic Theory of the State and the
pessimist tautologies of the Existentialists), a straight summary and respectful
evaluation of Marx' doctrines and methods, and winds up with a stinging re-
pudiation of the nimble scepticism of Mannheim's sociology of knowledge and the
prodigious mystifications of Arnold Toynbee.
Mr. Popper takes his stand as a "critical rationalist,"-somewhere alongside
Bertrand Russell, one supposes. The "Open Society" he champions is rational
society, the community in which individuals are confronted with personal deci-
sions and conscious preferences for certain consequences as opposed to others.
The Closed Society is tribal society. Although there is no standard tribal way of
life, tribal societies have in common a magical or irrational attitude towards the
customs of social life. Comparatively infrequent changes of the social pattern
have the character of religious conversion and of the introduction of new magical
taboos. They are not based on a fully rational attempt to improve social condi-
tions. Indeed, the organic or biological theory of the state fits the closed society
tolerably well. For in the open society many members strive to take the place
of other members whereas the phenomenon of the class struggle cannot be found
in the closed society. Since there is nothing in the organism which corresponds
to one of the most important features of the open society, competition for status of
its members, the organic theory is based on a false analogy. The closed society
knows of no such tendencies. "It is not surprising," Mr. Popper concludes,
"that most attempts to apply the organic theory to our society are veiled forms
of propaganda for a return to tribalism."
269
This content downloaded from 197.255.75.90 on Tue, 15 Jul 2014 04:33:27 AM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
270 BOOK REVIEWS
In the sixth century B.C. the "strain of civilization," the strain against the
feudal crust of tribalism, gave rise to a pervasive sense of uneasiness. The
breakdown of Greek society led not only to attempts to retain and arrest tribal-
ism, but also to that great spiritual
revolution,
the invention of thought freed
from magical obsessions. It is the philosophical attempt to impose a static
pattern upon a society in the process of turning fluid and free, which expresses,
as Mr. Popper sees it, the totalitarian bias of Plato, the aristocrat cast adrift on
the revolutionary currents of Athenian politics. Now it can be shown that the
Republic purports to furnish an analysis of the causes of, as well as a remedy for,
the disintegration of Greek society. The revolutionary process was triggered by
the universal principle of flux operating through the fissures in the class structure;
the remedy was institutional eugenic and educational control adtninistered by a
tribal hierarchy modelled after the military aristocracies of Sparta and Crete.
The institutional formulas suggested by Plato for preserving the fiber of the rul-
ing class and the verbalizations by which they may be justified and
veiled,
derive
their metaphysical sanction from the aesthetic doctrine of Ideas. It is precisely
the aesthetically so satisfying formulation of Platonic doctrine which conceals the
reactionary bias of his politics and the logical fallacies of his essentialism.
Mr. Popper's approach to Marx is more sympathetic (and far less dogmatic)
than his treatment of Plato. There is nothing startlingly new in his strictures
on economic historicism; similarly, in his attack on Plato he follows the trail
blazed by Grote and Gomperz who pointed out Plato's perversion of Socratic
humanitarianism, and of Crossman who showed the totalitarian drift of Platonic
argument. Fifty years ago the Revisionists pointed out the fallacies of Marx's
theory of the immiseration of the proletariat; the physicists' rejection, endorsed
by
Einstein,
of the dialectical method as the scientific method has, at least in this
country, put that pretentious claim beyond the realm of profitable discourse.
However, Mr. Popper's distinction between Marx's sensitive methods of socio-
logical analysis and his sweeping historical prophesies invests familiar topics with
the penumbra of novelty. The theory of the trade cycle, for example, is a mas-
terly deduction from observed processes of capitalist accumulation. The theory
of the class struggle is a brilliant institutional deduction. By contrast, his his-
torical prophesies do not fall within the scope of institutional analysis. In the
hour of their deepest misery and degradation the workers drew from Marxism
the belief in an universal mission. But it is the power of this faith, and not a
necessary law, which has brought about such a transformations as, for example,
that of Russian society.
Marx's sociological determinism precluded the development of-to paraphrase
Mr. Popper-a Marxist social technology. Lenin admitted that the "economic
law of contemporary society" had not provided practical solutions for the prob-
lems which confronted the Soviets at the moment of their accession to power. A
social technology "wlhose results can be tested by social engineering," removes
social phenomena from the foggy purlieu of doctrine and reduces sociological in-
vestigation to the bounds of the knowable. The only course open to the social
sciences is to forget all about the verbal fireworks and to tackle the problems of
our times with the help of the theoretical methods which are fundamentally the
This content downloaded from 197.255.75.90 on Tue, 15 Jul 2014 04:33:27 AM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
BOOK REVIEWS 271
same in. all
sciences,
i.e. methods of inventing competing hypotheses and of sub-
mitting them to practical tests. The empirical method has proved to be quite
capable of taking care of itself. Mr. Popper appears here to be saying what Ber-
trand Russell and the operationalists have been saying for some time. He calls
upon the social sciences to develop that same publicity of method and intersub-
jectivity which is the crucial social aspect of scientific method.
It is not surprising that an undertaking as ambitiously designed and as lustily
argumentative as is The Open Society and Its Enemies should have challenged
sharp criticism. In Britain publication of the book stirred considerable contro-
versy. Indeed, it may be argued that Mr. Popper exaggerates the class con-
sciousness of Plato and the virtues of Athenian democracy. In his search for the
emotive roots of Platonic philosophy he seems to employ the very methods of the
sociology of knowledge he rejects elsewhere. Similarly,
he ascribes to Democri-
tus and Protagoras a coherence of political thought which the scanty fragments of
their teachings do not reveal convincingly. In a restrictive sense history is pre-
dictive: one need not surrender supinely to the fatal fascination of Spengler's
fireworks or to the mystique of Toynbee to agree that certain historical conditions
recur with such regularity as to suggest meaningful hypotheses about the future.
This is a matter of carefully defined assumptions and not of some axiom of inevi-
tability. Thus, for example, one may deduce from history that under certain
conditions the perennial revolt against reason successfully frustrates the operation
of the human will. It is a fact that all free societies on record depended for sur-
vival on the exertion of political power, on authority poised between competing
interests. History offers some valuable clues as to the political conditions under
wvhich piecemeal social engineering can proceed to test and to experiment. A
social institution is in part the product of particular historical conditions and has
unique features. In so far as a social situation is unique it can not be described
precisely in any scientific system.
These are slight flaws in a highly stimulating book, fortified by scrupulous
references and forceful prose. Mr. Popper eschews that damnosa heredita of
German Kultur philosophy, the spurious synthesis. The lasting improvements
of man's lot-history here supports Mr. Popper's inferences-were made by
intelligent improvisation, i.e. by piecemeal social engineering. They could in-
variably have been made at a far smaller cost than was the price of the upheavals
which attended their achievement. The smallest of these concrete achievements
is worth an encyclopaedia of oracular philosophy and utopian planning. Mr.
Popper insists that the worth of a social institution can be tested by this simple
proposition: that it be designed to fit the stature of Man.
ROBERT STRAUSz-HUPE
University ?t Pennsylvania
The Logic of the Sciences and the Humanities. By
F. S. C. NORTHROP. The
Macmillan Company, New York, 1947. 397 pp. In this work Professor North-
rop has significantly contributed to the contemporary literature on scientific
method and its relation to the various areas of the humanities. The first portion
This content downloaded from 197.255.75.90 on Tue, 15 Jul 2014 04:33:27 AM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions