Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect. .
– Mark Twain.
Abstract
This paper is an attempt to summarize the contrast between the respective outlooks of the closed and the open societies, here presented as two separate coherent and consistent sets of ideas, principles, arguments and values. It was originally conceived as support for the thesis that the sense behind the apparent senselessness of our educational systems is that they function as a fifth column of the closed society entrenched within the open society, which thesis will be expounded upon in another envisaged paper. Yet, its usefulness is hoped to extend to other areas as well.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Popper (1945).
Crider (2017).
Postrel (1988). The paraphrase on Popper is deliberate, of course. Crider summarizes Postrel’s use of the terms in saying that “Stasists (those who hold on to the outlook of the closed society; C.Y.) of all political stripes believe there is one ideal arrangement for society… (whereas) dynamists (those who hold on to the outlook of the open society; C.Y.) of all persuasions, by contrast, believe society will always be and should be in constant flux as it adapts to new situations and opportunities. Postrel’s Dynamism is not to be confused, of course, with that of Leibniz, though it may be conjectured that some analogy was intended.
Significantly, in both pictures, that of Crider and that of Postrel, there is no trace of doubt, error, imperfect knowledge, dispute, controversy, etc.: all of which are central to Popper’s Open-Society outlook. Postrel’s dichotomy is, by her own admission, a response to Edward Bellamy's utopian novel Looking Backward, of 1887, which is a Dynamist utopia. She expounds elaborately on the differences between the two kinds of societies, never once mentioning Popper (on whose book the title of hers is a paraphrase), never once speaking about the question of perfect VS imperfect knowledge, doubt and the fallibility of humanity; and never once mentioning the outlooks, the inner logic, or the argumentation on either side of the divide.
Jarvie and Pralong (1999).
Germino and von Beyme (1974).
The current title for the darkest shade of black is Vantablack, titled after the matter that carries the same title, which is said to absorb 99.96 of the light. Wikipedia, and https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-darkest-color.
The expression, “logic of the situation” is as useful as it is vague, and as its source is unknown. It is most likely a variant of the idea popper’s concept of “situational logic”, or “situational analysis”. (Popper, 1936/1957). According to the Wikipedia it is “a process by which a social scientist tries to reconstruct the problem situation confronting an agent in order to understand that agent's choice”.
Most writers remain deliberately ambiguous on this topic. The paradigms are Michel Foucault and Noam Chomsky. The latter has criticized America on a thousand and one issues, thus letting on—but never actually saying—that American democracy is a sham. The former has trashed the democracy of al democracies, at times coming across as a champion of democracy for criticizing democratic countries for not measuring up to its demand, and at other times coming across as an enemy of democracy for trashing it as such. There is an entire heuristic literature that has evolved surrounding the question, is Foucault pro or anti-democratic. For a typical example see Olssen (2007).
See comment nr. 8 above.
The best by far presentation—and argumentation in support—of utopianism is Popper’s: The Utopian approach can be described as follows. Any rational action must have a certain aim. It is rational in the same degree as it pursues its aim consciously, and consistently, and it determines its means according to this end. To choose the end is therefore the first thing we have to do if we wish to act rationally; and we must be careful to determine our real or ultimate ends, from which we must distinguish clearly those intermediate or partial ends which actually are only means, or steps on the way to the ultimate end. If we neglect this distinction then we must also neglect to ask whether these partial ends are likely to promote the ultimate end, and accordingly we must fail to act rationally (Popper 1971, p. 157).
The title goes to Karl Popper, but the ideas go back to Socrates and the Pre-Socratics. The question, what was Popper’s contribution, exactly, is subject to some debate. Popper himself claimed it was very little. His most obvious contribution was to suggest that fallibility could provide solutions to the problems of induction and demarcation (Ormerod 2009).
Infallibilism has no known source. This is to be expected: in the majority of societies, cultures, times and places in history, it is the accepted commonsense. This is obvious in regards the founding prophets of all revelation religion, but it is equally and always was the norm in regards all members in the line of succession.
Fallibilism is also referred to, at times, as Philosophical skepticism. The champions thereof in ancient times are, possibly, Socrates and Sexus Empiricus. In Modern times they are Descartes (1641) and Hume (1739). For a concise presentation of his claim (“Neither observation nor reason can reveal with rational certainty anything about the nature of any of the facts that are presently unobserved”.) Also see “Fallibilism”, Hetherington (1995).
This polarizing view is as ubiquitous as its mention is rare. The closest I found to it is Splitting (also called black-and-white thinking or all-or-nothing thinking) coined by Ronald Fairbairn in his object relations theory (Fairbairn 1952); and the description of magical thinking by Claude Lévi-Strauss (1962).
The token of imperfect (or open-ended) rationality was put into use by Popper. It is possibly the central idea in all his writings, as well as the writings of his followers. Elster (1977), along with others, attributes it to Strotz (1955) and George Ainslie. Both these writers worked in Rational choice theory. In his lectures, Joseph Agassi repeatedly said that the very concept of choice presupposes imperfection: where perfect knowledge is available, choice is redundant, maybe impossible. Interestingly, and significantly, I suppose, imperfect (or open-ended) responsibility is completely absent in literature. This is strange considering that the concept of imperfect responsibility is more germane to democracy and the open society than the concept of imperfect rationality. This can be seen in some of the fundamental principles, customs and institutions thereof, including the prohibition on conflict of responsibilities (better known as conflicts of interest), the demand for transparency, and the institute of standards.
The operative words here are, “by nature”. Possibly the most important pioneer of this view was Sir Francis Bacon of the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries, the father of empiricism and of modern science. He said that the reason people do not want to learn is because learning interferes with our conviction that we already know what there is to know, which conviction we cherish more than anything in the world. This attitude he expressed in several sources. For example: “For my part I am emphatically of the opinion that man’s wits require not the addition of feathers and wings, but of leaden weights. Men are very far from realising how strict and disciplined a thing is research into truth and nature, and how little it leaves to the judgement of men.” (Farrington 1964). Similar ideas are found in all institutional religion, of which Bacon was an ardent opposer.
This view has no known source. The concept of the possibility of learning out of love is already found in several ancient cultures, most notably the Chinese, the Jewish, and the Greek. The idea is also recurrent in the writings of some of the philosophers of the Enlightenment, most notably Spinoza. Modern day champions of this idea are Albert Einstein, Bertrand Russel, Homer Lane and janusz korczak, amog others. Modern science reports of ubiquitous evidence supporting this view not only among humans but also among other mammal species.
The traditional dispute is between rationalism and fideism over the question which is the rational belief: rationalism says, a belief that is supported by facts. Fideism says, there is none. The modern-day dispute, as suggested by Popper, is between rationalism and loyalism—over the question, what to do with our beliefs, or its mirror twin, with our doubts. For more on this see Agassi (2012, pp. 34–55).
I use the expression “critical skepticism” loosely in line with the common practice, as distinguished from radical skepticism, in maintaining neither that we need nor that we can doubt everything, only keep an open mind. The great champion of this attitude in our times is Bertrand Russell. The spirit of openness permeates all his writings. For example, see Russell (1928).
Conformism is the default of all pre-rational societies. As such it is more of a primordial instinct than a philosophy. Studies that support this thesis are ubiquitous (see Richerson Boyd, in R.M. Nesse (ed.) 2001).
Possibly the greatest patron of nonconformism and the freedom of thought is Bertrand Russell, in numerous of his publications. (See Rolland et al. 1919).
Joseph Agassi repeatedly states in his lectures that this variant of conformism is, in truth, not (pre-rational) conformism but (anti-rational) reaction.
The linkage between identity and place is so commonplace in literature, that there is an entire field of study named after it: Identity Status Theory. Ancestral rights to this field are attributed to Erik Erikson (in his notion of stages of growth through identity crisis and choice) and Jean Piaget (in his 4 Stages of Cognitive Development). Some of the prominent contributors in the field have been brought together in an anthology by Marcia et al. (1993). The picture that emerges from the book is that the difference between the closed and the open societies is utterly irrelevant to the issues under consideration.
The process of closing the option of self-invention is the crystallization of personality or identity: crystals are famous for their incapacity to change. Dispute surrounds the question, at what age is one’s personality crystallized. The question in dispute here is different: is consideration desirable? To this, psychological theorists seem to imply a positive answer, whereas self-help writers and personal trainers explicitly pronounce a negative one.
The value of social mobility is often equated with the value of equal opportunity. Both values usually pass unchecked—i.e., as benign and completely unproblematic. An exception to that rule is the selection by Irenee et al. (2014).
This principle is also known as the principle of web/network affiliation, originated by Georg Simmel. For an ambitious attempt to scrutinize and map the field see: Lakshmi (2014)
The exception to this are equalitarian closed societies, such as the Israeli kibbutz. How can a closed society be equalitarian? To this, there are four competing answers: (1) The equalitarianism of closed societies is a disguise. (2) The closedness of egalitarian societies is a phantasm. (3) Closed equalitarian societies are simply inconsistent, and (4) in closed equalitarian societies, the principle of equalitarianism and the principle of hierarchy are applied to different realms or they take turns. Interestingly, the Israeli kibbutz is an example for them all…
This point deserves some reflection: the fact that the boss man plays God to his his subordinates and keeping them in their place is, on the most part, an intrinsic part of him knowing his place, not in one way but three: firstly, his place demands of him to keep them in place, which is highly assisted by them viewing him as God; secondly, his place demands of him to instill in them the belief in the Just Society Hypothesis which, too, is highly assisted by them viewing him as God; and, thirdly, thrusting impossible responsibilities upon his shoulder exerts pressure upon him to invest great efforts to measure up; which efforts generate fatigue and inevitably fail, to state the obvious; which generates guilt. The combination of pressure, fatigue and guilt, is ideal for reinforcing the habit of knowing one’s place.
The difference between different shades of conservatism deserves notice. One writer who does this regularly is George Will, (especially in his latest, Will 2019). His latest is about the evolution of American political thought, thus particularistic: yet its message can be taken to be universalist just the same. More to our present context—Will’s writing highlights the problematic nature of the very polarization between conservatism and… and what, exactly? Wehner (2019) brings Will’s treatment of Abraham Lincoln, as an example: Lincoln was a liberal and a reformist because he was an abolitionist, and a conservative, because he wanted to preserve the Union. Another commentator notices that according to Will, Lincoln was also a reactionary (though he doesn’t use this word), because he wanted to bring the country back to Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence and to James Madison’s constitution (Green 2019).
It is strange to note that, amidst all the controversy that surrounds the principles of the open society, this principle is consensus. It was recently echoed by Barak Obama: “The world respects us not just for our arsenal; it respects us for our diversity and our openness and the way we respect every faith” (Obama 2016). And also in the words spoken by Josh Lyman, in Aaron Sorkin’s The West Wing: “In the meantime, remember pluralism. You want to get these people (terrorists. C.Y.)? I mean, you really want to reach in and kill them where they live? Keep accepting more than one idea. Makes them absolutely crazy.” (Sorkin 2002).
An interesting and potent argument here is that diversity allows for homogeneity on a higher plain. This is how I understand Tariq Modood. The old nationalism versus multiculturalism dispute in England, he says, is misguided: multiculturalism is the chief feature in our national identity. (Modood 2007).
The best articulation I have read of this view goes to Bertrand Russell: “There can be no agreement between those who regard education as a means of instilling certain definite beliefs, and those who think that it should produce the power of independent judgment.” (Russell 1926). Also see his “Free Thought and Official Propaganda” (Russell 1922, 2009); and his “the will to doubt” (Russell 1958/2014). The question is now begged: when one wishes to preserve the values and the views of the open democratic society, is one a conservative or a democrat and a liberal? Possibly the paradigm is John Dewey. I suppose that the answer is that we need more information in order to decide. Possibly this is why almost all friends of open or democratic education view Dewey as a champion of their own creed, despite the fact that he never said as much in all of his voluminous publications on education. Of course, there is no way for me to be sure of what I just said. Thus I appeal to my reader: please correct me if you know different.
See comment nr. 8 above.
Kuhn (1962).
The phenomenon of self-fulfilling prophecies is the focus of much study, topic of much discourse, and subject to much controversy. This much is consensus: there is not a single human interaction—be it interpersonal, parental, economical, educational, political, and even international—in which it plays no role. And yet, the picture that emerges from the vast majority of the publications in all these fields, discussing the effect of whatever measure, custom, procedure or practice, is that it hardly has any role, if at all.
Closed educational facilities all over the world, i.e., schools, are referred to as formal, whereas open ones, such as community centers, are called, informal. The truth is on the other foot. Formalism is intrinsic not to authoritarianism but to liberalism and democracy. This is possibly most evident in the judicial systems of the liberal democracies (Grey 1999).
The idea that resorting to the use of force is an admission of failure is encompassed in the concept of necessary evil. From this it follows that states are necessary evils. The questions are, which evils are, indeed, necessary, and how can they be made less necessary or less evil. More importantly: given that we do not know the ultimate answers to these questions and that, due to changes in the world, even if we did know, the answers would soon become obsolete, it thus follows that the only way to render a necessary evil less necessary or less evil, is to keep these questions forever open. It thus follows that a society in which necessary evils are admitted and questioned is, by definition, less evil. This is one version of the critical rationalist defense of democracy. I found it in P. J. O'Rourke: “Politics is a necessary evil” (source unknown). Also see: Wills (2002).
One of these is Bertrand Russell, as quoted above in comment 34.
Bibliography
Agassi, J. (2012). Critical rationalism, comprehensive or qualified: The Popper–Bartley dispute”. In G. Franco, (Ed.), Der Kritische Rationalismus als Denkmethode und Lebensweise: Festscrhift zum 90. Geburtstag von Hans Albert (pp. 34–55). Klagenfurt: Kitab.
Bacon, F. (1964). “The Refutation of Philosophies” from The Masculine Birth of Time. trans. Benjamin Farrington in The Philosophy of Francis Bacon. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, Phoenix Books.
Beattie, I. R., Ford, K., & Arum, R. (2014). The structure of schooling: Readings in the sociology of education. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.
Bellamy, E. (1887/1996). Looking backward, Later edition. New York: Dover Thrift.
Bergson, H. (1932/2015). The two sources of morality and religion, Last publication. London: Andesite Press.
Crider, P. (2017). The open and closed political axis. In Liberal currents. Retrieved from https://www.liberalcurrents.com/the-open-and-closed-political-axis/.
Descartes, R. (1641). Metaphysical meditations (Méditations métaphysiques). Later edition: Penguin Classics, 1999 Online. Retrieved from http://selfpace.uconn.edu/class/percep/DescartesMeditations.pdf Also: https://sites.google.com/site/kunstfilosofiesite/Home/texts/descartes-metaphysical-meditations.
Dewey, J. “My Pedagogic Creed” (1897), The School and Society (1899), The Child and the Curriculum (1902); The Relation of Theory to Practice in Education (1904); The Sources of a Science of Education (1929); Philosophy and Civilization (1931); Knowing and the Known (1949).
Elster, J. (1977). Ulysses and the Sirens: A theory of imperfect rationality. Information (International Social Science Council),16(5), 469–526.
Fairbairn, R. (1952). Psychoanalytical studies of personality. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Germino, D., & von Beyme, K. (Eds.). (1974). The open society in theory and practice. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-2056-5.
Green, L. (2019). The conservative sensibility review: George Will and a right wronged. The Guardian Weekly Online. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jun/09/the-conservative-sensibility-review-george-will-trump.
Grey, T. C. (1999). “The New Formalism”. Stanford Law School, Public Law and Legal Series, Working Paper No. 4.
Hetherington, S. (1995). “Fallibilism”. In J. Fieser, & B. Dowden (Eds.), The internet encyclopedia of philosophy, https://www.iep.utm.edu/fallibil/.
Hume, D. (1739/2011). A treatise of human nature, Later edition: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.
Jarvie, I., & Pralong, S. (Eds.). (1999). Popper’s Open Society after fifty years: The continuing relevance of Karl Popper. New York: Routledge, The Taylor and Francis Group.
Kuhn, T. (1962). The structure of scientific revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Lakshmi R. (2014). “Past, present and future research on multiple identities: Toward an intrapersonal network approach”. The Academy of Management Annals, Taylor and Francis Online. Retrieved from https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Publication%20Files/Ramarajan-2014-Annals-Multiple%20identities-intrapersonal%20network%20approach_b2358fa9-050f-46c2-b57a-d855b4a14d22.pdf.
Lévi-Strauss, C. (1962). The savage mind, English version by the University of Chicago Press.
Marcia, J. E., Waterman, A. S., Matteson, D. R., Archer, S. L., Orlofsky, J. L. (Eds.). (1993). Ego identity, a handbook for psychosocial research. Springer; Softcover reprint of the original 1st ed. 1993 edition (November 6, 2011).
Modood, T. (2007). Multiculturalism: A civic idea. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Obama, B. President Obama’s 2016 State of the Union Address. https://medium.com/@ObamaWhiteHouse/president-obama-s-2016-state-of-the-union-address-7c06300f9726.
Olssen, M. (2007). Invoking democracy: Foucault’s conception (with insights from Hobbes). Counterpoints: Studies in Criticality,292, 205–226.
Ormerod, R. (2009). “The history and ideas of critical rationalism: The philosophy of Karl Popper and its implications for OR. Journal of the Operational Research Society,60(4), 441–460.
O’Rourke, P. J. Politics is a necessary evil. Retrieved from https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/p_j_orourke_617355.
Popper, K. R. (1936/1957). “The Poverty of Historicism” first published as a paper in 1936, then as a book in 1957. Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Popper, K. R. (1945). The open society and its enemies. George Routledge & Sons, Ltd. Later edition: Routledge; later editions: 1971, 2002. Retrieved from https://monoskop.org/images/4/42/Popper_Karl_The_Open_Society_and_its_Enemies_The_Spell_of_Plato_Vol_1_1st_ed.pdf.
Postrel, Virginia. (1988). The future and its enemies: The growing conflict over creativityenterprise, and progress. New York: The Free Press.
Richerson, P. J., & Boyd, R. (2001). The evolution of subjective commitment to groups: A tribal instincts hypothesis. In R. M. Nesse (Ed.), The evolution of subjective commitment. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
Rolland, R. (co-signed by Albert Einstein, Bertrand Russell, Jane Addams, Stephan Zweig, and a few dozen, others). (1919). Declaration of the independence of the mind.
Russell, B. (1926). On education, especially in early childhood. London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd.
Russell, Bertrand. (1928). “On the value of scepticism” in Russell. Sceptical Essays: Routledge.
Russell, B. (1958/2014). The will to doubt Philosophical Library (recent edition). Welcome Rain Publishers.
Russell, B. (2009). Free thought and official propaganda”1922. The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell. London: Routledge Classics.
Sorkin, A. (2002). The West Wing, Season 3, episode “Isaac and Ishmael”.
Soros, G. (2006). “Europe as a Prototype for a Global Open Society” talk delivered at the European Policy Centre in Brussels. Retrieved from https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/voices/europe-prototype-global-open-society.
Strotz, R. H. (1955). Myopia and inconsistency in dynamic utility maximization. The Review of Economic Studies,23(3), 165–180.
Wehner, P. (2019). George will changes his mind—But stays true to his convictions. The Atlantic online magazine. Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/07/what-makes-a-true-conservative/594889/.
Will, G. (2019). The conservative sensibility. New York: Hachette Books.
Wills, G. (2002). A necessary evil: A history of american distrust in government. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Funding
This study was not funded.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of interest
The author declares that he has no conflict of interest.
Involvement of Animals or Humans
This article does not contain any studies with human or animal participants performed by the author
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Yehezkely, C. THE LOGIC OF CLOSEDNESS AND OPENNESS: The Outlooks of the Closed and the Open Society April 2019. Interchange 51, 293–313 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10780-019-09378-w
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10780-019-09378-w