“If our civilisation is to survive,” Karl Popper writes at the beginning of this passionate defence of freedom and reason, “we must break with the habit of deference to great men.”

The Open Society and Its Enemies, conceived in the 1930s, and completed in the 1940s, would become a key text of the 1960s, and its author a profound, sometimes thrilling, influence on a new generation of college students. Thus, a book inspired by the Nazi invasion of Austria in 1938, but actually written in the secluded tranquillity of New Zealand’s South Island, became a rallying cry, on behalf of western liberal democracy, for the postwar renewal of the European tradition.

Before the inevitable backlash, Popper, an émigré intellectual determined to address “the difficulties faced by our civilisation”, became a touchstone for progressive opinion. His fierce critique of Plato, Hegel and Marx was understood as an assault on totalitarian thought, and became widely fashionable, even when denounced by dissenting scholars and rivals. At the same time, The Open Society and Its Enemies (published in two volumes: The Spell of Plato and The High Tide of Prophecy: Hegel, Marx, and the Aftermath) was the product of the philosopher’s own intellectual journey.

The rhetorical force and clarity of Popper’s writing is singular and impressive, and never less than intensely readable

As a young man, Popper had adopted Marxism, a decision that would seriously influence many of his later ideas. For a few months in 1919 he had even considered himself a communist, becoming quite at home with the orthodoxies of class conflict, and the central tenets of Marxist economics and history. Although he quickly became disillusioned, this youthful flirtation with Marxist ideology would lead him to distance himself from those who believed in violent revolution. Eventually, during the long disillusionment of the 1920s, he came to realise that the sacrifice of human life must be a last resort, and that radical thought and conduct must be exercised with exemplary caution and prudence.

Popper was not only dismayed by the failure of democratic parties to prevent fascism from taking over Austrian politics in the 1920s and 1930s, he suffered directly from the consequences of this historic failure. The Nazis’ annexation of Austria, with the Anschluss of 1938, forced the young philosopher into permanent exile. Henceforth, he would devote himself to a lifelong assault on totalitarian thought in general, and Marxism in particular.

His philosophical interests also concerned science and the uncertainty of knowledge. Some of his teaching, indeed, would eventually play an important part in the intellectual development of Thomas Kuhn (No 21 in this series). Popper questioned the idea that there were inexorable laws of human history, believing history to be influenced by the growth of knowledge, which is always unpredictable.

Karl Popper, the enemy of certainty, part 1: a rejection of empiricism | Liz Williams Read more

Popper had first expressed his arguments about science in The Logic of Scientific Discovery (1934), arguing that science proceeds through bold, competing conjectures subjected to rigorous testing. He once said that “next to music and art, science is the greatest, most beautiful and most enlightening achievement of the human spirit”.

But it was as the sponsor of the idea of “the open society”, and defender of democratic systems, that he became most widely known. The Open Society and Its Enemies, finally published in 1945, has been described as one of the most influential books of the 20th century. As well as popularising the open society, it argued that communism and fascism were philosophically linked, and demonstrated the subtle interconnections of politics and culture: “The contention that Plato’s political programme is purely totalitarian, and the objections to this contention,” writes Popper, “have led us to examine the part played, within this programme, by such moral ideas as Justice, Wisdom, Truth and Beauty.” In response, Bertrand Russell, an important champion, declared Popper’s work to be “a vigorous and profound defence of democracy, timely, interesting and very well written”.

With hindsight, it’s the rhetorical force and clarity of Popper’s writing that is both singular and impressive, and also never less than intensely readable: “Who can doubt that Plato reveals here how seriously he was impressed by the creed of the open society, and how hard he had to struggle to come to his senses and to realise where he was – namely, in the camp of its enemies.”

In his introduction to a second edition, Popper concedes the degree to which his work was influenced by the second world war: “The fact that most of the book was written during the grave years when the outcome of the war was uncertain may help to explain why some of its criticism [is] more emotional and harsher in tone than I could wish. But it was not time to mince words.”

Popper claimed he’d never made any explicit reference to the war. Nonetheless, his book “was an attempt to understand those events and their background, and some of the issues which were likely to arise after the war was won”.

The 100 best nonfiction books: No 21 – The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas S Kuhn (1962) Read more

In the spirit of the cold war, and the political climate in which The Open Society and Its Enemies was first being read, Popper did not hesitate to declare Marxism “a major problem” and just “one of the many mistakes we have made in the perennial and dangerous struggle for building a better and freer world”. Accordingly, Popper did not hesitate to identify “the darkness of the present world situation”, claiming this to be his justification for his “severe treatment of Marx”.

From the perspective of 2016, much of Popper’s polemic seems almost as remote as medieval theology. Contingency and the zeitgeist will always have an important role to play in the making of such nonfiction classics. Popper’s conclusion remains at once radical, and deeply conservative:

“Our greatest troubles spring from something that is as admirable and sound as it is dangerous – from our impatience to better the lot of our fellows. These troubles are the by-products of what is perhaps the greatest of all moral and spiritual revolutions of history, a movement which began three centuries ago. It is the longing of uncounted unknown men to free themselves and their minds from the tutelage of authority and prejudice. It is their attempt to build up an open society ... It is their unwillingness to sit back and leave the entire responsibility for ruling the world to human or superhuman authority … This revolution had created powers of appalling destructiveness; but they may yet be conquered.

A Signature Sentence

“This book sketches some of the difficulties faced by our civilisation – a civilisation which might perhaps be described as aiming at humaneness and reasonableness, at equality and freedom; a civilisation which is still in its infancy, as it were, and which continues to grow in spite of the fact that it has been so often betrayed by so many of the intellectual leaders of mankind.”

Three to Compare

Gilbert Ryle: The Concept of Mind (1949)

Willard Van Orman Quine: From a Logical Point of View (1953)

Thomas Kuhn: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962)