The Open Society and Its Enemies (1+2)

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.

First sentence: This book raises issues which may not be apparent from the table of contents.

Year

1945

Language

English

Publisher

Routledge

Editions

39

Reader rating

4.4 / 5 (5)

Pages

920

ISBN

9780415282369

Data source: Wikidata