Excerpts: (to address the social and political problems created by The Great Pandemic)
Although much of what is contained in this book took shape at an earlier date, the final decision to write it was made in March 1938 on the day I received the news of the invasion of Austria. The writing extended into 1943..Neither the war nor any other contemporary event was explicitly mentioned in the book; but it was an attempt to understand those events and their background, and some of the issues which were likely to arise after the war was won. The expectation that Marxism would become a major problem was the reason for treating it at some length.
…Marxism is only an episode – one of the many mistakes we have made in the perennial and dangerous struggle for building a better and freer world.
I see now more clearly than ever before that even our greatest troubles spring from something that is as admirable and sound as it is dangerous – from our impatience to better the lot of our fellows. For these troubles are the by-products of what is perhaps the greatest of all moral and spiritual revolutions of history, a movement which began three centuries ago. It is the longing of uncounted unknown men to free themselves and their minds from the tutelage of authority and prejudice. It is their attempt to build an open society which rejects the absolute authority to preserve, to develop, and to establish traditions, old or new, and of rational criticism. It is their unwillingness to sit back and leave the entire responsibility for ruling the world to human and superhuman authority, and their readiness to share the burden of responsibility for avoidable suffering, and to work for its avoidance. The revolution has created powers of appalling destructiveness; but they may yet be conquered. (Preface to the Second Edition, 1950)
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This book … sketches some of he difficulties faced by our civilization – a civilization which might be perhaps described as aiming at humaneness and reasonableness, at equality and freedom; a civilization which is still in its infancy, as it were, and which continues to grow in spite of the fact that it has been so often betrayed by so many of the intellectual leaders of mankind. It attempts to show that this civilization has not yet fully recovered from the shock of its birth – the transition from the tribal or “closed society”, with its submission to magical forces, to the “open society” which sets free the critical powers of man. It attempts to show that the shock of this transition is one of the factors that have made possible the rise of those reactionary movements which have tried, and still try, to overthrow civilization and to return to tribalism. And it suggests that what we call nowadays totalitarians belongs to a tradition which is just as old or just as young as our civilization itself. It tries thereby to contribute to our understanding of totalitarianism, and of the significance of the perennial fight against it.
It further tries to examine the application of the critical and rational methods of science to the problems of the open society. It analyzes the principles of democratic social reconstruction, the principles of what I may term “piecemeal social engineering” in opposition to “Utopian social engineering”. And it tries to clear away some of the obstacles impeding a rational approach to the problems of social reconstruction. This is a question of the method of the social sciences. It is clearly more fundamental than any criticism of any particular argument offered in support of any historical prophecy.
A careful examination of this question led me to the conviction that such weeping historical prophecies are entirely beyond the scope of scientific method. The future depends upon ourselves and we do not depend on any historical necessity. There are, however, influential social philosophies which hold the opposite view. They claim that everybody tries to use his brains to predict impending events; that it is certainly legitimate for a strategist to strategist to try to foresee the outcome of a battle; and that the boundaries between such a prediction and more sweeping historical prophecies are fluid. They assert that it is the task of science in general to make predictions, or rather , to improve upon our everyday predictions, and to put them upon a more secure basis; and that it is, in particular, the task of the social sciences to furnish us with long-term historical prophecies. They also believe that they have discovered laws of history which enable them to prophesy the course of historical events. The various social philosophies which raise claims of this kind, I have grouped together under the name of historicism. Elsewhere, in The Poverty of Historicism, I have tried to argue against these claims, and to show that in spite of their plausibility they are based on a gross misunderstanding of the distinction between scientific prediction and historical prophecy. This book does not try to replace the old systems of philosophy by a new system. It does not try to add to all these volumes filed with wisdom, to the metaphysics of history and destiny, such as are fashionable nowadays. It rather tries to show that this prophetic wisdom is harmful, that the metaphysics of history impede the application of the piecemeal methods of science to the problems of social reform. And it further tries to show that we may become the makers of our fate when we have ceased to pose as its prophets.
In tracing the development of historicism, I found that the dangerous habit of historical prophecy, so widespread among our intellectual leaders, has various functions. It is always flattering to belong to the inner circle of the initiated, and to possess the unusual power of predicting the course of history. Besides, there is a tradition that intellectual leaders are gifted with such powers, and not to possess them may lead to loss of caste. The danger, on the other hand, of their being unmasked as charlatans is very small, since they can always point out that it is certainly permissible to make less sweeping predictions; and the boundaries between these and augury are fluid.
But there are sometimes further and perhaps deeper motives for holding historicist beliefs. The prophets who prophesy the coming of a millennium may give expression to a deep-seated feeling of dissatisfaction; and their dreams may indeed give hope and encouragement to some who can hardly do without them. But we must realize that their influence is liable to prevent us from facing the daily tasks of social life. And these minor prophets who announce certain events such as a lapse into totalitarianism (or perhaps into “managerialism”), are bound to happen may, whether they like it or not, be instrumental in bringing these events about. Their story that democracy is not to last forever is as true, and as little to the point, as the assertion that human reason is not to last, forever, since only democracy provides an institutional framework that permits reform without violence, and so the use of reason in political matters. But their story tends to discourage those who fight totalitarianism; its motive is to support the revolt against civilization. A further motive, it seems, can be found if we consider that historicist metaphysics are apt to relieve men from the strain of their responsibilities. If you know that things are bound to happen whatever you do, then you may feel free to give up the fight against them. You may, more especially, give up the attempt to control those things which most people agree to be social evils, such as war; or, to mention a smaller but nevertheless important thing, the tyranny of the petty official.
…There are some social philosophies…which preach the impotence of reason in social life, and which, by this anti-rationalism, propagate the attitude: “either follow the Leader, the Great Statesman, or become a Leader yourself”‘an attitude which for most people must mean passive submission to the forces, personal or anonymous, that rule society.
…Some of those who denounce reason, and even blame it for the social evils of our time, do so on the one hand because they realize the fact that historical prophecy goes beyond the power of reason, and on the other hand because they cannot conceive of a social science, or of reason in society, having another function but that of historical prophecy. …the doctrine that the social sciences, if they are to be of any use at all, must be prophetic. It is clear that this attitude must lead to a rejection of the applicability of science and of reason to the problems of social life – and ultimately to a doctrine of power, of domination and submission.
Why do all these social philosophies support the revolt against civilization? And what is the secret of their popularity? Why do they attract and seduce so many intellectuals? I am inclined to think that the reason is that they give expression to a deep=felt dissatisfaction with a world which does not and cannot, live up to our moral ideas and to our dreams of perfection. The tendency of historicism to support the revolt against civilization may be due to the fact that historicism itself is, largely, a reaction against the strain of our civilization and its demand for personal responsibility. (Introduction, pp 1-5)
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In what follows, the magical or tribal or collectivist society will also be called the closed society, and the society in which individuals are confronted with personal decisions, the open society. p173
The contrast between the Platonic and the Socratic creed is even greater than I have shown so far. Plato, I have said, followed Socrates in his definition of the philosopher. ” Whom do you call true philosophers? – Those who love truth”, we read in the Republic. But he himself is not quite truthful when he makes this statement. He does not really believe in it, for he bluntly declares in other places that it is one of the royal privileges of the sovereign to make full use of lies and deceit: It is the business of the rulers of the city if it is anybody’s, to tell lies, deceiving both its enemies and its own citizens for the benefit of the city; and o one else much touch this privilege.
“For the benefit of the city” , says Plato Again we find that the appeal to the principle of collective utility is the ultimate ethical consideration. Totalitarian morality overrules everything, even the definition, the Idea of the philosopher. It need hardly be mentioned that, by the same principle of political expediency, the ruled are to be forced to tell the truth. If the ruler catches anyone else in a lie, …;then he will punish him for introducing a practice which injures and endangers the city…Only in this slightly unexpected sense that Platonic rulers …the philosopher kings – are lovers of truth. p. 138
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Lycophron
Aristotle tells us that Lycophron considered the law of the state as a “covenant by which men assure one another of justice” (and that it has not the power to make citizens good or just). He tells us furthermore that Lycophron looked upon the state as an instrument for the protection of its citizens against acts of injustice (and permitting them peaceful intercourse, especially exchange), demanding that the state should be a “co-operative association for the prevention of crime” p. 114
The Abstract Society
As a consequence of its loss of organic character, an open society may become by degrees, what I should like to term an “abstract society”. It may, to a considerable extent, lose the character of a concrete or real group of men, or of a system of such real groups. This point which has been rarely understood may be explained by way of an exaggeration. We could conceive of a society in which men practically never meet face to face – in which all business is conducted by individuals in isolation who communicate by typed letters or by telegrams, and who go about in closed motor-cars. (Artificial insemination would allow even propagation without a personal element.} Such a fictitious society might be called a “completely abstract or depersonalized society.”
Now the interesting point is that our modern society resembles in many of its aspects such a completely abstract society. Although we co not always drive alone in closed motor cars (but meet face to face thousands of en walking past us in the street) the result is very nearly the same as if we did – we do not establish as a rule any personal relation with our fellow-pedestrians. Similarly, membership of a trade union may mean no more than he possession of a membership card and the payment of a contribution to an unknown secretary.There are many people living in a modern society who have no, or extremely few, intimate personal contacts, who live in anonymity and isolation, and consequently unhappiness. For although society has become abstract, the biological make-up of man has not changed much; men have social needs which they cannot satisfy i an abstract society. p 174
Of course, our picture is even in this form highly exaggerated. There never will be or can be a completely abstract or even a predominantly abstract society – no more than a completely rational or even a predominantly rational society. Men still form real groups and enter into real social contacts of all kinds, and try to satisfy their emotional social needs as well as they can. But most of the social groups of a modern open society (with the exception of some lucky family groups) are poor substitutes, since they do not provide for a common life. And many of them do not have any function in the life of the society at large. p. 175
Another way in which the picture is exaggerated is that it does not so far , contain any of the gains made – only the losses. But there are gains. Personal relationships of a new kind can arise where they can be freely entered into, instead of being determined by the accidents of birth; and with this, a new individualism arises. Similarly, spiritual bonds can play a major role where the biological or physical bonds are weakened; etc. However this may be, our example, I hope, will have made plain what is meant by a more abstract society in contradistinction to a more concrete or real social group; and it will have made it clearl that our modern open societies function largely by way of abstract relations, such as exchange or co-operation. (It is the analysis of these abstract relations with which modern social theory, such as economic theory, is mainly concerned. This point has not been understood by many sociologists, such as Durkheim, who never gave up the dogmatic belief that society must be analyzed in terms of real social groups.) p 175
In the light of what has been said, it will be clear that the transition from the closed to the open society can be described as one of the deepest revolutions though which mankind has passed. Owing to what we have described as the biological character of he closed society, this transition must be felt deeply indeed. Thus when we say that our Western civilization derives from the Greeks,we ought to realize what it means. It means that the Greeks started for us that great revolution which , it seems, is still in its beginning – the transition from the closed to the open society. p. 175
Perhaps the most powerful cause of the breakdown of the closed society (In Greece) was the development of sea-communications and commerce. Close contact with other tribes is liable to undermine the feeling of necessity with which tribal institutions are viewed; and trade, commercial initiative, appears to be one of the few forms in which individual initiative and independence can assert itself, even in a society in which tribalism still prevails.These two, seafaring and commerce, became the main characteristics of Athenian imperialism, as it developed in the fifth century B.C. And indeed, they were recognized as the most dangerous developments by the oligarchs, the members of the privileged, or of the formerly privileged, classes of Athens. It became clear to them that the trade of Athens, its monetary commercialism, its naval policy, and its democratic tendencies were pats of one single movement, and that is impossible to defeat democracy without going to the roots of the evil and destroying both the naval policy and the empire. But the naval policy of Athens was based upon its harbors, especially the Piraeus, the center of commerce and the stronghold of the democratic party; and strategically, upon the walls which fortified Athens, and later, upon the Long Walls which linked it to the harbours of the Piraeus and Phalerum. Accordingly, we find that for more than a century the empire, the fleet, the harbour, and the walls were heated by the oligarchic parties of Athens as the symbols of the democracy and as the sources of its strength which they hoped on day to destroy. p.177
Sparta
The ultimate aim that dominated Sparta’s policy, by its attempt to arrest all change and to return to tribalism. (This is impossible, as I shall contend later on. Innocence once lost cannot be regained, and an artificially arrested closed society, or a cultivated tribalism, cannot equal t-humanitarianism: shut out, more he genuine article.) The principles of Spartan policy were these:
- Protection of its arrested tribalism: shut out all foreign influences which might endanger the rigidity of tribal taboos.
- Anti-humanitarianism: shut out, more especially, all equalitarian, democratic, and individualistic ideologies.
- Autarky: be independent of trade
- Anti-universalism or particularism: uphold the differentiation between your tribe and all others; do not mix with inferiors
- Mastery:dominate and enslave your neighbors
- But do not become too large: The city should grow only as long as it can do so without impairing its unity, and especially, without risking the introduction of universlistic tendencies. p. 182
Pericles Funeral Oration
- Our government does not copy our neighbors’, but is an example to them. It is true that we are called a democracy, for the administration is in the hands of the many and not of the few. But while there exists equal justice to all and alike in their private disputes, the claim of excellence is also recognized; and when a citizen is in any way distinguished, he is preferred to the public service, not as a matter of privilege, but as the reward of merit. Neither is poverty an obstacle, but a man may benefit his country whatever the obscurity of his condition. There is no exclusiveness in our public life, and in our private business we are not suspicious of one another, nor angry with our neighbor if he does what he likes; we do not put on sour looks at him which, though harmless, are not pleasant. While we are thus unconstrained in our private business, a spirit of reverence pervades our public acts; we are prevented from doing wrong by respect for the authorities and for the laws, having a particular regard to those which are ordained for the protection of the injured as well as those unwritten laws which bring upon the transgressor of them the reprobation of the general sentiment.
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- Our form of government does not enter into rivalry with the institutions of others. Our government does not copy our neighbors’, but is an example to them. It is true that we are called a democracy, for the administration is in the hands of the many and not of the few. But while there exists equal justice to all and alike in their private disputes, the claim of excellence is also recognized; and when a citizen is in any way distinguished, he is preferred to the public service, not as a matter of privilege, but as the reward of merit. Neither is poverty an obstacle, but a man may benefit his country whatever the obscurity of his condition. There is no exclusiveness in our public life, and in our private business we are not suspicious of one another, nor angry with our neighbor if he does what he likes; we do not put on sour looks at him which, though harmless, are not pleasant. While we are thus unconstrained in our private business, a spirit of reverence pervades our public acts; we are prevented from doing wrong by respect for the authorities and for the laws, having a particular regard to those which are ordained for the protection of the injured as well as those unwritten laws which bring upon the transgressor of them the reprobation of the general sentiment.
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- Then, again, our military training is in many respects superior to that of our adversaries. Our city is thrown open to the world, though and we never expel a foreigner and prevent him from seeing or learning anything of which the secret if revealed to an enemy might profit him. We rely not upon management or trickery, but upon our own hearts and hands. And in the matter of education, whereas they from early youth are always undergoing laborious exercises which are to make them brave, we live at ease, and yet are equally ready to face the perils which they face. And here is the proof: The Lacedaemonians come into Athenian territory not by themselves, but with their whole confederacy following; we go alone into a neighbor’s country; and although our opponents are fighting for their homes and we on a foreign soil, we have seldom any difficulty in overcoming them. Our enemies have never yet felt our united strength, the care of a navy divides our attention, and on land we are obliged to send our own citizens everywhere. But they, if they meet and defeat a part of our army, are as proud as if they had routed us all, and when defeated they pretend to have been vanquished by us all.Pericles’ speech is not only a programme. It is also a defense, and perhaps even an attack. It reads, as I have already hinted, like a direct attack on Plato. I do not doubt that it was directed not only against the arrested tribalism of Sparta, but also against the totalitarian ring or “link” at home; against the movement for the paternal state, the Athenian “Society of the Friends of Laconia”. pp 186-187
Link to Pericles Full Funeral Oration
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On Socrates:
There is a fundamental difference between a democratic and a totalitarian criticism of democracy. Socrates’ criticism was a democratic one, and indeed of the kind that is the very life of democracy. (Democrats who do not see the difference between a friendly and a hostile criticism of democracy are themselves imbued with the totalitarian spirit. Totalitarianism, of course, cannot consider any criticism as friendly, since every criticism of such an authority must challenge the principle of authority itself.) p 189
I have already mentioned some aspects of Socrates’ teaching: his intellectualism, i.e. his equalitarian theory of human reason as a universal medium of communication; his equalitarian theory of justice, and his doctrine that it is better to be a victim of injustice than to inflict it upon others. I think it is this last doctrine which can help us best understand the core of his teaching, his creed of individualism, his belief in the human individual as an end in himself.
The closed society, and with it its creed that the tribe is everything and the individual nothing, had broken down. Individual initiative and self assertion had become a fact. Interest in the individual as individual, and not only as tribal hero and saviour,had been aroused. But a philosophy which makes man the centre of its interest began only with Protagoras. And the belief that there is nothing more important in our life than other individual men, the appeal to men to respect one another and themselves, appears to be due to Socrates. p 190
On Education
…One of the fundamental tenets of Socrates was, I believe, his moral intellectualism. By this I understand (a) his identification of goodness and wisdom, his theory that nobody acts against his better knowledge, and that lack of knowledge is responsible for all moral mistakes; (b) his theory that moral excellence can be taught, and that it does not require any particular moral faculties, apart from the universal human intelligence.
Socrates was a moralist and an enthusiast. He was the type of man who would criticize any form of government for its shortcomings (and indeed such criticism would be necessary and useful for any government, although it is possible only under a democracy) but he recognized being loyal to the laws of the state. As it happened, he spent he spent his life largely under a democratic form of government, and as a good democrat he found it his duty to expose the incompetence and windbaggery of some of the democratic leaders of his time. At the same time, he opposed any form of tyranny; and if we consider his courageous behaviour under the Thirty Tyrants then we have no reason to assume that his criticism of democratic leaders was inspired by anything like anti-democratic leanings. It is not unlikely that he demanded (like Plato) that the best should rule, which would have meant, in his view, the wisest, or those who knew something about justice.
But we must remember that by “justice” he meant equalitarian justice (as indicated by the passages from the Gorgias quoted in the last chapter), and that he was not only a equalitarian but also an an individualist- perhaps the great apostle of an individualistic ethics of all time. And we should realize that, if he demanded that the wisest men should rule, he clearly stressed that he did not mean the learned men; in fact, he was skeptical of all professional learnedness, whether it was that of the philosophers of the past or of the learned men of his own generation, the Sophists. The wisdom he meant was of a different kind. It was simply the realization: “how little do I know?” Those who did not know this, he taught,knew nothing at all. (This is the true scientific spirit. Some people still think, as Plato did when he had established himself as a learned Pythagorean sage, that Socrates’ agnostic attitude must be explained by he lack of success of the science of his day. But this only shows that they do not understand this spirit, and that they are still possessed by the pre-Socratic magical attitude towards science, and towards the scientist, whom they consider as a somewhat glorified shaman, as wise, learned, initiated. They judge him by the amount of knowledge in his possession, instead of taking, with Socrates, his awareness of what he does not know as a measure of his scientific level as well as his intellectual honesty.)
It is important to see that this Socratic intellectualism is decidedly equalitarian. Socrates believed that everyone can be taught; in the Meno, we see him teaching a young slave a version of the now so-called theorem of Pythagoras, in an attempt to prove that any uneducated slave has all the capacity to grasp even abstract matters.
And his intellectualism is also anti-authoritarian. A technique, for instance rhetoric, may perhaps be dogmatically taught by an expert, according to Socrates; but real knowledge, wisdom and also virtue, can be taught only by a method which he describes as a form of midwifery. Those eager to learn may be helped to free themselves from their prejudice; thus they may learn self-criticism, and that truth is not easily attained. They may also learn to make up their minds, and to rely, critically on their decisions, and on their insight. In view of such teaching , it is clear how much the Socratic demand (if he ever raised this demand) that the best, i.e., the intellectually honest, should rule, differs from the authoritarian demand that the most learned, or from the aristocratic demand that the best. i.e., the most noble, should rule. (Socrates’ belief that even courage is wisdom can, I think, be interpreted as a direct criticism of the aristocratic doctrine of the nobly born hero.)
But this moral intellectualism of Socrates is a two-edged sword. It has its equalitarian and democratic aspect, which was later developed by Antisthenes. But it has an aspect which may give rise to strongly anti-democratic tendencies. Its stress upon the need for enlightenment, for education, might easily be misinterpreted as a demand for authoritarianism. This is connected with a question which seems to have puzzled Socrates a great deal: that those who are not sufficiently educated , and thus those that are not wise enough to know their deficiencies, are just those who are in the greatest need of wisdom, in fact all the wisdom claimed by Socrates for himself; for he who is ready to learn knows how little he knows. The uneducated seems thus to be in need of an authority to wake him up, since he cannot be expected to be self-critical. But this one element of authoritarianism was wonderfully balanced in Socrates’ teaching by the emphasis that the authority must not claim more than that. The true teacher can prove himself only by exhibiting that self-criticism which the uneducated lacks. “Whatever authority I have rests solely upon my knowing how little I know”: this is the way in which Socrates might have justified his mission to stir up the people from their dogmatic slumber. This educational mission he believed to be also a political mission. He felt that the way to improve the political life of the city was to educate the citizens to self-criticism. In this sense, he claimed to be “the only politician of his day”, in opposition to those others who flatter the people instead of furthering their true interests.
This Socratic identification of his educational and political activity could easily be distorted into the Platonic and Aristotelian demand that the state should look after the moral life of its citizens. And it can easily be used for a dangerously convincing proof that all democratic control is vicious. For how can those whose task is to educate be judged by the uneducated? How can the better be controlled by the less good? But this argument, of course, is entirely un-Socratic. It assumes an authority of the wise and learned man, and goes far beyond Socrates’ modest idea of the teacher’s authority as founded solely on his consciousness of his own limitations. State-authority in these matters is liable to achieve, in fact, the exact opposite of Socrates’ aim. It is liable to produce dogmatic self-satisfaction and massive intellectual complacency, instead of critical dissatisfaction and eagerness for improvement.
I do not think it is unnecessary to stress this danger which is seldom clearly realized. Even an author like Crossman, who, I believe, understood the true Socratic spirit, agrees with Plato in what he calls Plato’s third criticism of Athens: “Education, which should be the major responsibility of the State, had been left to individual caprice…Here again was a task which should be entrusted only to the man of proven probity. The future of any State depends on the younger generation, and it is therefore madness to allow the minds of children to be moulded by individual taste and force of circumstances. Equally disastrous had been the State’s laissez faire policy with regard to teachers and schoolmasters and sophist lecturers.
But the Athenian states’ laissez faire policy, criticized by Crossman and Plato, had the invaluable result of enabling certain sophist-lecturers to teach, and especially the greatest of them all, Socrates. And when this policy was later dropped, the result was the death of Socrates. This should be a warning that state control in such matters is dangerous, and that the cry for the man of “proven probity” may easily lead to the suppression of the best. (Bertrand Russell’s suppression is a case in point.) But as far as basic principles are concerned, we have here an instance of the deeply rooted prejudice that the only alternative to laissez faire is full state responsibility. I certainly believe that it is the responsibility of the state to see that its citizens are gven an education enabling them to participate to develop their special interests and gifts; and the state should certainly also see (as Crossman rightly stresses) that the lack of “the individual capacity to pay” should not debar him from higher studies. This, I believe, belongs to the State’s protective functions.
To say, however, that the “future of the state depends on the younger generation, and that it is therefore madness to allow the minds of children to be moulded by individual taste”, appears to me to open wide the door to totalitarianism. State interest must not be lightly invoked to defend measures which may endanger the most precious of all forms of freedom, namely, intellectual freedom. And although I do not advocate “laissez faire with regard to teachers and schoolmasters”, I believe that this policy is infinitely superior to an authoritative policy that gives officers of the state full powers to mould minds, and to control he teaching of science, thereby backing the dubious authority of the expert by that of the state, ruining science by the customary practice of teaching it as an authoritative doctrine, and destroying the scientific spirit of inquiry – the spirit of the search for truth, as opposed to the belief in its possession.
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Harper Torch Book, Volume I, 1962 (1945 Routledge and Kegan Paul)
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