The open society and its enemies

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Karl Popper: The open society and its enemies (1995, Routledge)

766 pages

English language

Published Jan. 7, 1995 by Routledge.

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An open society provides its citizens with a mechanism for changing government; a closed society doesn't, forcing its citizens to rely on extra-legal revolution. Popper analyzes the open-closed society debate using three exemplars of closed-society advocacy: Plato, Hegel (and wow, does Popper hate on Hegel), and Marx. The main analytical viewpoints are historicist (backward-looking, utopian) motivations for closed societies and rational (forward-looking, empirical) motivations for open societies.

39 editions

Subjects

  • Political science -- Philosophy.