By R R Reno, First Things. (image: Helena Lopes/Unsplash)
Written by Karl Popper after he fled Austria in the late 1930s, The Open Society and Its Enemies was published as World War II ended. The book attained canonical status as an explanation of the totalitarian temptation, and it provided a template for the reconstruction of the West after the war.
In the late 1980s, the waning years of the Cold War, I read The Open Society and Its Enemies. Born and raised in the postwar consensus that Popper had done so much to shape, I made favorable comments in the margins. The basic dichotomy—open versus closed—seemed entirely correct. Isn’t “openness” the fundamental virtue of the West, as opposed to the “closed” world of ideological conformity?
I re-read The Open Society and Its Enemies a few years ago when I sat down to write Return of the Strong Gods. My reaction then was quite different. I recoiled from Popper’s blunt attacks on Plato’s subtle efforts to incite in us a love of truth. Blinded by his hatred of oppression, Popper could not see the positive role played by a rapturous ardor for transcendence. We need love’s demands if we are ever to put aside convenient truisms and comfortable self-deceptions. I finished the book with dismay. Popper’s vision for the future of humanity amounts to a loveless world of soulless technocrats engaged in the equitable distribution of utilities to people who imagine that the highest virtue is to believe in nothing strongly enough to do anyone harm.
Nevertheless, the book retains an allure for me. Popper wrote with a paradoxical passion unwarranted by his own philosophy of self-skeptical scientism. His urgency motivates me to imagine penning a response: The Love Society and Its Enemies.