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Articles

‘The Open Society’ Revisited

Alan Haworth on Karl Popper, his vision of a pragmatic, liberal society, and his assessment of its philosophical enemies.

It is now one hundred years since the birth of Karl Popper, and almost sixty since the first appearance of The Open Society and its Enemies. It was the former anniversary which recently provided me with an occasion to re-read Popper’s great classic. A subsequent encounter with a text by which one was first impressed some years previously is usually an interesting experience, and I was curious to see what I would make of it this time round.

The Open Society is a book with several related objectives. On one level, you can treat it quite straightforwardly, as a critical work of philosophy which deals, in detail, with the main ideas of certain political philosophers.

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