CapitalistImperialistPig

Chapter 10 of The Open Society and its Enemies, also titled TOSAIE, is a reward for some of the past labor.  Popper is both eloquent and expansive here, clearly describing his vision of the open society, and giving much needed background on Athens in the 5th Century BCE.  He introduces a pantheon of heroes of the open society: Protagoras, Democritus, and, above all, Pericles and Socrates. Given that much of what we know of Socrates comes to us from Plato, it is a little curious that he seems to ultimately be the most fundamental betrayer of Socrates and his philosophic thought.  It seems clear that the "Socrates" of The Republic and other late dialogues is so at odds with the Socrates we see in more personal dialogues thought to be early. Popper tries to analyze this betrayal, and comes up some interesting ideas, including some supposed signs of guilty regret, but I won't pretend to evaluate them.  It is his final chapter devoted to Plato, and I have to say that he c...

I am frequently confused by some of the terms Popper uses in TOSAIE, so I constructed a short list of terms he considers equivalent or at least closely related. The Open Society: Democratic, liberal, humanitarian, universalist, dynamic, open, having faith in reason, freedom, and the brotherhood of man. Totalitarian Society: Tribal, conservative, reactionary, backword looking, aristocratic or oligarchic,  repressive, anti-intellectual, particularist. I find the "tribal" a bit incongruous, but I can deal with it. Needless to say, I'm on the side of his good guys, 

 2500 years ago. The next passages quoted, written as a general reflection on the Corcyraean Revolution of 427 B.C., are interesting, first as an excellent picture of the class situation; secondly, as an illustration of the strong words Thucydides could find when he wanted to describe analogous tendencies on the side of the democrats of Corcyra. (In order to judge his lack of impartiality we must remember that in the beginning of the war Corcyra had been one of Athens’ democratic allies, and that the revolt had been started by the oligarchs.) Moreover, the passage is an excellent expression of the feeling of a general social breakdown: ‘Nearly the whole Hellenic world’, writes Thucydides, ‘was in commotion. In every city, the leaders of the democratic and of the oligarchic parties were trying hard, the one to bring in the Athenians, the other the Lacedaemonians … The tie of party was stronger than the tie of blood … The leaders on either side used specious names, the one party prof...