Nature, history and politics in the open society

Abstract

ABSTRACT Karl Popper characterizes the open society as a civilization that allows egalitarian conversation, distinguishes the facts of nature from normative values, eschews a foretold historical trajectory, avoids a binary contrast of wholly right to wholly wrong, and in consequence, shores up a constitutional and democratic polity. Critics have pointed that Popper himself occasionally endorses a moralistic view of nature, a foretold historical plot, a binary form of presentation, and a constrained view of democracy. I argue that these apparent anomalies in Popper’s outlook are interlinked in the same way that Popper expects them to be in the closed society and are presented in the binary fashion he ascribes to the closed society. The open society derives its perception of politics from a structured understanding of nature and history and divides the field into two opposing camps that are simultaneously political, moral and ideological, disallowing third options, such as political realism.