Discover / Book
The Open Society and Its Enemies (1+2)

The Open Society and Its Enemies (1+2)

Karl Popper · 1945 · 713 pages

As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases. Some book links are affiliate links; you pay the same price and we may earn a small commission.

About this book

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.

Appears in these reading paths

Related reading guides

Reader reviews

Ratings and notes from readers — tagged with how deep into the subject they were.

Loading reviews…

Discussion