The open society and its enemies Book

Have you wondered what Plato was all about or had trouble reading through his lengthy works? Get this wonderful book where an outstanding author does the hard work for you, then lays out the gist of Plato's thoughts in clear, easily and quickly readable prose.

Behind our societies lie influential ideas, philosophies about the best way to organize humanity. In a few cases, the general public might be able to associate a person with an idea - Marx and communism, Jefferson and American democracy - but for the most part the philosophers whose thoughts deeply impact the way things are remain unknown. Too many think of philosophy as irrelevant to daily life; the verbose and complex musings of pointy headed intellectuals that have no impact. Nothing could be further from the truth. Neo-conservatism and neo-liberalism are philosophies that have driven America into a ditch, yet few citizens would be able to say anything about what these two philosophies are about, who the proponents have been or how the philosophies came to be.

Ideas drive civilization. The only reason this is not clear to us is that we are concerned with the details of getting on with our lives. We're all deeply embedded in ideas made real whose lifetimes far exceed that of a human being. It's easy to have no perspective as we live out life under one system and know no other. Things appear the way they are with no alternative. This is a problem. If you don't know how something works, how can you begin to fix it? If you can't fix it, it deteriorates until tyranny and then revolution follow, bringing a new idea in on a tide of blood. Democracy in particular is a work always in progress. A democracy where the citizenry drops out, loses interest, becomes cynical, hands over power to the powerful who are more than willing to take it. But I am speaking of current events. To the book.

The ancient Greeks are acknowledged to be the founders of Western thought, the thought that comes down through history to the present day in America and Europe, and they put democracy into practice. One of these ancient Greeks, Socrates (d. 399 BCE), is a name most of us have heard as well as that of his pupil, Plato, and of Plato's pupil, Aristotle, who tutored Alexander the Great.

Plato, the founder of the first academy and a prolific writer, left his thoughts well documented. Our knowledge of Socrates comes mostly from Plato, who often in his writings put words into the mouth of Socrates in addition to detailing the Socratic method. Plato has never been far from the thoughts of the powerful in the Western world ever since.

Karl Popper writes his book (this one is part one of two) to warn us of the danger in Plato's thoughts, so widely venerated over the ages, as they are a prescription for totalitarianism, the enemy of the open society. The open society is one where individuals are free to determine their lives and to make their own decisions. The closed society is one where individual life is important only in how it contributes to the strength of the state. The closed society dictates to the individual a life with an assigned status and function.

Plato wrote at a time when Athens, a democracy, had recently been defeated by totalitarian Sparta in the 30 year Peloponnesian Wars. At this time of anxiety and insecurity, Plato, a sympathizer and admirer of Sparta, lays out a prescription for the ideal state in his Republic a work founded on the desire for stability and a fear of change. Plato, a pessimist, believed that there were perfect Ideas and Forms, that, once put into use could not help but degenerate from the originals. He seeks to hold back this degeneration as much as possible by the creation of a state that rejects change, demands adherence to order above all things, and forbids novelty which can only hasten decay.

Popper, drawing evidence from all of Plato's work, makes the case that the good of the state is what Plato considers to be justice. Humanity is to be divided up into the rulers, the guardians and the masses (including slaves) that are to stay in their places through the generations, all serving to maintain the stability of the state with no chance of moving from one class to another. Eugenics is to be used to keep the human stock from deteriorating. Lies to the public by the rulers are perfectly ok in the service of maintaining a national myth to rally around.

With thorough analysis and frequent quotes, Popper indicts Plato in his own words, stripping away the fog of veneration to reveal the harsh ideal that laid the foundation for the kind of thinking exemplified by that of Hitler's National Socialism. At the heart of Popper's work is his rejection of what he calls historicism, the idea that there is a historical tide in human events that dictates the future, that we are all floating on a sea of inevitable societal change that will take one form and then another heedless of the individuals that make up the mass, that there is a fate, a destiny to societies. Popper sees this as mythological nonsense, but immensely influential and quickly embraced by those thinkers who long for a structure underlying human existence, a meaning, a reason that makes sense of history and that allows prophecy.

I have long known of Popper as he is widely admired and quoted but never could get hold of his work. Public libraries don't have his books and only a nearby university library did. Thanks to Amazon I found used copies of The Open Society and Its Enemies for a pittance. What I have been missing! Volume II moves on from Plato to deal with Hegel and Marx to do the same with them - taking apart their grand designs to show the danger within. He mentions in volume II that to avoid a huge book on historicism through the ages he skipped over the long period between Plato and Hegel. I wish he hadn't because I would eagerly read it.