Popper Hayek And The Open Society

This book compares Karl Popper and Friedrich Hayek systematically and critically assessing their contribution to the political philosophy of the Open Society and is controversial in that they are defended in areas where they are usually criticized.

Karl Popper and Friedrich von Hayek are remembered as two of the twentieth century’s greatest proponents of open society. However, over the years, Hayek’s ideas have tended to be favoured over Popper’s in both academic and political discussions. This book aims to improve understanding of Popper’s and Hayek’s philosophies by explaining their differences, and whilst doing so, to encourage liberal political philosophers to take a better-informed and more sympathetic look at Popper’s ideas about open society. Popper and Hayek differed in subtle but fundamental ways about rationality, economism, and democracy. They thus differed about whether and to what extent society is well served by deliberate attempts at social engineering and government intervention in the economy. They also differed about whether democracy is better served by institutions designed to elect the best leaders, or by institutions designed to protect us against the leaders we elect. And they differed, perhaps most importantly, about whether we should value freedom as a means to prosperity or an end-in-itself. This book argues that Hayek’s views about rationality, economism, and democracy are fundamentally at odds with Popper’s3⁄4 and perhaps even with open society itself—and that the unintended consequences of Hayek’s views may actually pose a threat to Popper’s vision of a liberal and free open society.

In this long-awaited volume, Jeremy Shearmur and Piers Norris Turner bring to light Popper's most important unpublished and uncollected writings from the time of The Open Society until his death in 1994. After The Open Society: Selected Social and Political Writings reveals the development of Popper's political and philosophical thought during and after the Second World War, from his early socialism through to the radical humanitarianism of The Open Society. The papers in this collection, many of which are available here for the first time, demonstrate the clarity and pertinence of Popper's thinking on such topics as religion, history, Plato and Aristotle, while revealing a lifetime of unwavering political commitment. After The Open Society illuminates the thought of one of the twentieth century's greatest philosophers and is essential reading for anyone interested in the recent course of philosophy, politics, history and society.

A coherent survey of the reception and influence of Karl Popper's masterpiece The Open Society and its Enemies over the fifty years since its publication in 1945.

Popper is one of the twentieth century's towering and influential philosophical and intellectual figures, widely read today This marks the first time The Open Society and Its Enemies has been published in a single paperback volume (hardback version was published for the Popper Centenary in 2002) Features a preface by Vaclav Havel and a 'personal recollection' on the story behind the book's publication by Ernst GombrichThe Open Society is one of the twentieth century's most important books, both in its impact on European intellectual and political life and in its sales

The key values of the Open Society - freedom, justice, tolerance, democracy and respect for knowledge - are increasingly under threat in today's world. As an effort to uphold those values, this volume brings together some of the key political, social and economic thinkers of our time to re-examine the Open Society closely in terms of its history, its achievements and failures, and its future prospects. Based on the lecture series Rethinking Open Society, which took place between 2017 and 2018 at the Central European University, the volume is deeply embedded in the history and purpose of CEU, its Open Society mission, and its belief in educating sceptical but passionate citizens. This volume aims to inspire students, researchers and citizens around the world to critically engage with Open Society values and to defend them wherever they are at risk. The volume features contributions from, among others: Dorothee Bohle, Timothy Garton Ash, Jacques Rupnik, Steven Walt, Erica Benner, Robert Kaplan, Andras Sajo, Roger Scruton, Alina Mungiu-Pippidi, and Pierre Rosanvallon.

This latest volume in the Collaborative Biography of Hayek examines the interconnectedness between Hayek’s (1944) The Road to Serfdom and George Orwell’s Animal Farm (1945) and Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949); his relationship with Karl Popper and Karl Polanyi; and the work of Wilhelm von Humboldt. Mises had a ‘deep emotional attachment’ to the ‘free’ market and Hayek believed that ‘science’ was driven by shallow emotions. Hayek believed in ‘democracy as a system of peaceful change of government; but that’s all its whole advantage is, no other.’ He felt democracy simply made it possible to get rid of the government ‘we’ dislike. Hayek bemoaned the decay of superstition — the ‘supporting moral beliefs’ – that are required to maintain ‘our’ civilization. Yet his Road to Serfdom neglected ‘another road to serfdom’ – the possibility that there were multiple threats to individual freedom – not just State power. In contrast, many other scholars and public intellectual warned of the dangers of the concentration of power in institutions other than the State. Today those fears have materialized in the guise of wealthy mega-corporations and billionaires whose influence on government, on elections, on popular culture and on the dominant ideology, have been able to change the rules of the market in their favour – so that ‘we’ have now become trapped in a new kind of serfdom. With contributions from a range of highly regarded scholars, this volume continues the Biography’s rich exploration of Hayek’s work and beliefs.

Written in political exile during the Second World War, The Open Society and its Enemies prophesied the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and exposed the fatal flaws of socially engineered political systems.