Sometimes when you read text that is over seventy years old, you find it not relevant. The language is ‘outdated’, words have changed meaning or fallen out of use, references obscures.
If it is a scientific paper you may find it archaic, many have come since, updated theories, refuted claims or discredited the work overall.
Our world is changing and not many texts remain as current today as they did in 1945.
It is therefore exiting when you come across a book that not only has withstood the test of time but seems to have been written for our times.
The Open Society & Its Enemies is one of these books.
It was originally written as two volume set, but because of shortage of paper during the WWII it was published in one volume in 1945.
Karl Popper was born in Austria, in 1902.
He studied philosophy at the University of Vienna but moved to New Zealand in 1937 where he taught and wrote until the end of WWII.
Popper then moved to England in 1946, where he lived, taught, first as professor at London School of Economics and then at the University of London until 1969, and wrote until his death in 1994.
In Volume One, under the title, The Spell of Plato, Popper mounts fears attack on Plato, his Historicism, and his totalitarian tendencies.
Historicism is a term that might need a short explanation.
“Historicism” is the theory that social and cultural phenomena are determined by history, and tendency to regard historical development as the most basic aspect of human existence.
As Popper, an opponent of historicism, stated himself in the introduction to The Open Society, “The future depends on ourselves, and we do not depend on any historical necessity”.
I have written about history in another article, explaining that although we are an accumulation of our history, our history does not care about our future, so I will focus here on Plato and totalitarianism.
Popper recognizes Plato as one of the greatest philosopher and writer of all times, and his motive to mount this attack on Plato was not to belittle him but came from his conviction that, as he says, “if our civilization is to survive, we must break with the habit of deference to great men. Great men may make great mistakes”.
In the book, Popper, points out the difference between Socrates (an equalitarian) and Plato (a totalitarian), and how the later supported slavery, class division, military rule, and tyranny, and with that tried to devise a system that would arrest all social change, or progress.
In his support for his claim that Plato’s writing has influenced tyrants and dictators over the ages, Popper traces each of Plato’s main works and contrasts the differences between The Apology (for example), a Socratic work of Plato and The Laws, The Statesman and The Republic, which are purely Platonic in construction.
He quotes Plato works extensively and contrasts against humanism but matches it up with quotes from autocratic rulers of history.
I believe only few quotes are enough to expose Plato sympathy for and support for totalitarianism as well as his antipathy or hatred of democracy and democratic rules.
Using quotes from The Open Society this is abundantly clear.
On justice: “‘The city is just … if each of its three classes attends to its own work’.
This statement means that Plato identifies justice with the principle of class rule and of class privilege. For the principle that every class should attend to its own business mean, briefly and bluntly, that the state is just if the ruler rules, the worker works, and if the slave slaves.
On equality: In the Laws, Plato summarizes his reply to equalitarianism in the formula: ‘Equal treatment of unequals must mean inequality’; and this was developed by Aristotle into the formula; ‘Equality for equals, inequality for unequals’.
On individuality: Two quotes from the law. First a famous reference to the Republic, whose ‘community of women and children and property’ it discusses. Plato describes here the constitution of the Republic as ‘the highest for of the state’. In this highest state, he tells us, ‘there is common property of wives, of children, and of all chattels.
And everything possible has been done to eradicate from our live everywhere and in every way all that is private and individual. …’
Second, ‘The greatest principle of all’, he wrote, ‘is that nobody, whether male or female, should ever be without a leader. Nor should the mind of anybody be habituated to letting him do anything at all on his own initiative, neither out of zeal, nor even playfully. …’
These are only four quotes, and there is much more to choose from. In this way, Popper brings up how far away from democratic thinking Plato is. In the book, he also underlines the lasting effect Plato has had on philosophy through the ages and the influence he has had on undemocratic, authoritarian, and totalitarian leaders up to the day of writing the book, in the midst of WWII.
One has only to glance through the first chapters to see the influence of Plato have not diminished since Popper wrote The Open Society.
There is ample evidence of that in the new every day with quotes of totalitarian leaders around the world, reusing the same arguments such leaders have used since over 2,400 years ago.
There is an additional point made in The Open Society, that is omitted by most, but is extremely important. It is the difficulties faced when translating text from one language to another.
These difficulties are only augmented when the translation is being performed on texts as old as The Republic.
For example, “the title ‘Republic’ is simply the English form of the Latin rendering of a Greek word that had no association of the kind, and whose proper English translation would be ‘The Constitution’, or ‘The City State’ or ‘The State’. The traditional translation ‘The republic’ has undoubtedly contributed to the general conviction that Plato could not have been a reactionary.”
The book is not easy to read. Although only just over 200 pages, it has over 100 pages of notes and references, where Popper explains the root of his theories, gives support to his arguments, and calls to the table some of the greatest philosophers, historians and other of all times.
The Open Society & Its Enemies is one of the most important text on political philosophy of last century. An uncompromising defense of liberal democracy and a powerful attach on the intellectual origins of totalitarianism.
The book has a special meaning these times, it shows us how fragile our democracy is and how some charlatans may twist the truth and turn it into its opposite, and then get, even those who by all their hart despise totalitarianism, to agree with them that social change is needed.
In Volume II, Popper brings Plato’s teachings closer to our times and shows us how Plato has influenced the extreme, both on the right and on the left in modern politics.
I’ll be posting on that later.
You can also read FEEDBACK: History does not care about the future
