The Open Society and Its Enemies

Popper finalizes his discussion of Plato by examining the historical development from a closed to an open society with broad strokes. Of particular interest is one turning point in the history of Western civilization, for which ancient Greece was the source (163). This turning point was the Peloponnesian War between the city-states of Sparta and Athens—and much of the Greek world as a result of alliances.

The Great Generation of Athens is the reason why Popper considers this time period significant. This group included several intellectuals who were the early proponents of what eventually developed into an open society. One such example was Pericles, the “great leader of democracy […] who formulated the principle of equality before the law and of political individualism” (175). Popper also highlights the school of Gorgias, which included Alcidamas, Lychophron, and Antisthenes. He credits them with the establishment of central ideas to challenge slavery as an institution as well as anti-nationalism. Popper calls their work “the creed of the universal empire of men” (175). It is Socrates who is the greatest thinker of the Great Generation because he was a proponent of human reason, self-criticism, and intellectual honesty. Popper also credits Socrates with teaching humanity that “the spirit of science is criticism” (175), along with the “equalitarian theory of justice” (179). Popper views these philosophical developments “as a response to the breakdown of the closed society and its magical beliefs” (178).

Magical beliefs are intrinsic to tribal societies, such as the early Greeks or the Maoris. These societies share a number of traits, including irrationality, stringent social rules and customs, taboos based on magical thinking, and fear of change. As a result, the inhabitants of these societies have near-absolute certainty about the way they should behave in a variety of scenarios (164). Change is so rare, in fact, Popper argues that it has “the character of religious conversions or revulsions, or the introduction of new magical taboos” (164).

Even modern Western society is not free from taboos, such as public etiquette. Typically, however, it is the legal system and the “ever-widening field of personal decisions, with its problems and responsibilities” that are some of the traits of a burgeoning open society (165). Popper describes an open society as a society progressively heading toward abstraction and de-personalization (165-56). On an epistemological level, the gradual development of an open society from its closed counterpart was “one of the deepest revolutions through which mankind has passed” (166). However, the breakdown of a closed society wrought with magical thinking and irrationality led to many questions, such as those of class and social status (168).

Popper views the Peloponnesian War between Sparta and Athens as emblematic of this tension between closed and open society. He uses History of the Peloponnesian War written by the Athenian historian Thucydides to qualify Athens as “the leading democracy” (168). However, Popper recognizes the fact that this democracy was based on slavery and that Athens was an empire (172). He contrasts Athens with Sparta, which halted the development toward an open society (167-68). Popper locates these distinctions in the different approaches to commerce and foreign policy (168). Specifically, the author credits sea travel—along with commercial ventures—as the key reason for the decline of the Athenian closed society (168). For this reason, Athenian oligarchs hated the fleet and the harbor “as symbols of democracy” (169), and they treacherously supported Sparta (170-11). In other words, the transition to an open society in Athens took the form of class war (174).

Sparta’s foreign and domestic policies, in contrast, embodied a closed society. Their primary goal was to prevent change from happening. Sparta sought to achieve this goal by minimizing foreign influence, choosing self-sufficiency over international trade, reducing individualistic and humanitarian tendencies, and opting for localism over universalism (173-74). Popper believes that the Spartan approach, though successful in the short term, was doomed to fail: “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” (189). The only way forward, he argues, is the way toward an open society (189).

Popper finalizes his analysis of the Peloponnesian War by returning to Plato and Socrates. He contrasts the personal integrity of Socrates with Plato’s reliance on propaganda, superstitions, and the “brutal violence” of totalitarianism (188). Ultimately, Popper envisions Plato “as a totalitarian party-politician, unsuccessful in his immediate and practical undertakings, but in the long run only too successful in his propaganda for the arrest and overthrow of a civilization which he hated” (161). One of the thinkers impacted by Plato is Hegel, who is discussed in the next volume.