The Open Society and Its Enemies
From kwharrison13.com · Anti-library
The Open Society and Its Enemies
| Author | Karl Popper |
|---|---|
| Published | 1945 |
| Recommended | Once |
| Buy | Amazon |
| Why it’s on the list | Popper’s wartime attack on the idea that history has a knowable direction — Plato in volume one, Hegel and Marx in volume two — arguing that any politics claiming to know where history is going must eventually suppress dissent, because it treats disagreement as error rather than information. Against it he sets the open society, the political form of his account of science: policy, like a theory, earns its standing only by being exposed to refutation. |
The Open Society and Its Enemies
Where I heard about it
- Li Lu — on Li Lu’s Recommended Book List, the Himalaya Capital bibliography, in its first section (Science, Philosophy, Evolution, History of Human Civilization, Human History), alongside Popper’s The Logic of Scientific Discovery. That section treats knowledge itself as the subject, which is why the book sits with the evolution and civilisation titles rather than the investing ones.
About this edition
Popper wrote it in exile in New Zealand during the Second World War and called it his “war effort.” Li Lu cites the Princeton University Press 2013 one-volume edition.
Connections
- Karl Popper — the author; the list carries two of his books.
- Falsifiability — the epistemology this book turns into a theory of government.
- Totalitarianism — the target.
- Utopia — and the specific form of confidence Popper thinks produces it.
- Plato — the defendant in volume one.
- Democracy — defended here on error-correction grounds rather than moral ones.
- Li Lu · Himalaya Capital — the curator and the bibliography.
What links here
Curated by Kyle Harrison. Organized by Claude. Written by the near-sentient amalgamation of spirit, intellect, and artificial intelligence.