Bust of Pericles, Roman Imperial copy of a Greek original. Vatican Museo Pio-Clementino. Photo credit: Marie Lan Nguyen.
Let me say that our system of government does not copy the institutions of our neighbors. It is more the case of our being a model to others than of our imitating anyone else.–Pericles, Funeral Oration. Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, Book I
In the first installment of this post, called “The Open Society and Its Frenemies” I began a project to try to defend the ideal of the ‘open society’ which is so clearly under assault in the new age of Trump. The project arose from my incredulity that ‘making America great again’ could mean undermining our collective commitment to openness as a value. I started by attempting to situate The Open Society in the world that we know after the collapse of communism, as a way to think about what it means to defend the open society today, when the enemies of the open society are seen to come “from within rather than from without.” Hence the title, The Open Society and Its Frenemies.
In the second installment, Frenemies 2: Popper’s Critical Rationalism, I explored Popper’s account of the growth of knowledge in his work in the philosophy of science in relation to his broader restatement of this position, which he calls ‘critical rationalism,’ and how this connects to his work defending the importance of the open society. In this installment, Frenemies 3, I now turn to Karl Popper’s historical sociology, his account of the golden age of Pericles and the Peloponnesian War as a way to defend openness in contemporary societies.
Karl Popper & Ancient Greece
It was Hegel who made famous the term “world-historical individual” in the various works of his philosophy of history. Hegel described them as being “practical and political men” and provided examples like Alexander and Napoleon. These were what we would call today “men of action” but with a difference – they somehow comprehended (without comprehending) what the Spirit of their age was calling forth, and they smashed at it and smashed at it, until the new form within lay at last revealed.
But Hegel also sometimes suggested that there is another kind of world-historical individual as well, specifically the untimely ones, figures like Goethe, whom he thought remarkable precisely because he was somehow not of his time. Nietzsche thought himself to be such a man out of season also, and by almost all accounts, he appears to have been right. Finally, in his book ‘Socrates, Buddha, Jesus and Confucius,’ Karl Jaspers, for example, simply assumes that such as these wear the mantle of world historical individual precisely because of their unplumbed depths. As cyphers to their devotees and even themselves, they were therefore also men for all times, their portraits redrawn continually in a different light in every generation and every age.
That Socrates was such a person would seem hard to deny, since his uniqueness seems to have been well-recognized in his own time. We need only consider the different versions of him that come down to us from the fourth century BCE, in the Platonic dialogues, in Xenophon, and in Aristophanes. In The Open Society and its Enemies, Karl Popper has nothing at all nice to say about Plato, and while he has more temperate things to say about Socrates’ intentions, the truth is, he simply isn’t very interested in him.
Thucydides, Xenophon, and Plato, in his view, were all foes of Athenian democracy. They provide important testimony to say the least, but each in his own way has an axe to grind.
If there is a scandal about Popper’s work on ancient Greece it isn’t so much the fact that he is not a close reader of ancient texts in the style of ‘Leo Strauss and friends’ at the University of Chicago, although it’s certainly true that he completely lacks their air of ‘Heidegger mysticism.’ No, what got Popper exiled to Claremont McKenna was more his insistent focus on the historical and cultural context of Greek democratic politics as his touchstone rather than preoccupations of a more literary-philosophical bent. If Popper does not read closely in the manner of the Straussians, it’s mostly because he does not consider the extant sources to be particularly reliable witnesses—Thucydides, Xenophon, and Plato, in his view, were all foes of Athenian democracy. They provide important testimony to say the least, but each in his own way has an axe to grind.
The balance of the action of Plato’s dialogues take place in the fourth century BCE, in the twenty-year period before Athens came to be under the tyranny of the Thirty and Sparta. While Popper has pages and pages of things to say about the fourth and third century philosophical critics of democracy, his attention and his interest really rests with the fifth century golden age of Pericles, with the Peloponnesian War, and what he sees as the start of the “great revolution, which it seems, is still in its beginning—the transition from the closed to the open society.”
Athenian Cosmopolitanism and the Great Strain
Popper’s account of the Athenian empire as at war with Sparta and torn by class struggle, has been labeled historical sociology. This is because what he is attempting to describe is what he calls the birth pangs of a perennial conflict between the forces of openness (individualism-rationalism-cosmopolitanism-egalitarianism) standing up in opposition to the forces of the closed society (collectivism-magical thinking-tribalism-elitism). “Our Western civilization,” he writes, “originated with the Greeks. They were…the first to make the step from tribalism to humanitarianism. Let us consider what that means.”
In Popper’s telling, as Athens began to realize it’s imperial ambitions after the Persian war, dominating the central Mediterranean and Greek colonies that dotted it, the breakdown of the traditional or tribal society (which had been underway since the sixth century) accelerated. The combination of naval power and democracy gives rise to seafaring trade, which in turn creates a new cosmopolitanism. Ideas are shared, traditions are relativized and syncretized, individualism grows, and then you get all that art and architecture and the birth of philosophy and science. But there is also a reaction, because all of this puts the traditional society under great strain. For some, there is nostalgia for the old days; this includes those who yearn for the days when it was clear what arete (virtue) consisted in, and the only issue was the challenge to live up to it. For others, it was nostalgia for uncontested aristocratic rule.
The breakdown of the closed society and the rise of the open society occur under conditions of class conflict and nostalgia for the eternal verities of a bygone age, and as result, great social strain.
So, according to Popper, the Aegean tribal societies of the early Bronze Age, despite their differences, adhered to a similar pattern that lasted for at least a thousand years — rule by tribal chiefs or aristocratic families, with most aspects of life structured by kinship ties, rigid tribal taboos, customs, and social mores, and of course an extreme distrust of outsiders. The main thing, however, is not so much the magical explanations, the taboos, etc. The thing that makes tribal societies closed societies in Popper’s view is not the content of magical explanations, but rather the attitude that does not distinguish between custom and nature, and which sees a supernatural will enforcing both. “When I speak of the rigidity of tribalism, I do not mean that no changes can occur in the tribal ways of life. I mean rather that the comparatively infrequent changes have the character of religious conversions or revulsions, or of the introduction of new magical taboos. They are not based on a rational attempt improve social conditions.” In contrast to social life as regulated by collective responsibility to adhere to tribal taboos, Popper sees in sixth and fifth century BCE Athens the emergence of personal responsibility and rational reflection—“With Alcmaeon, Phaleas, and Hippodamus, with Herotodus and the Sophists, the quest for the best constitution assumes, by degrees, the character of a problem which can be rationally discussed.”
To make the point once again, the breakdown of the closed society and the rise of the open society occur under conditions of class conflict and nostalgia for the eternal verities of a bygone age, and as result, great social strain. The privileged classes felt threatened, as did others who perceived that the world of their ancestors was fading. The meaning of all of this, however, this expansive discussion of tribal/closed and democratic/open is really to provide a basis for understanding the Peloponnesian War. Popper writes, “In this light we must try to understand the history of Sparta, which successfully tried to arrest these developments, and Athens, the leading democracy.” Sparta, it turns out, is the closed society par excellence. In fact, Sparta is the champion of the closed society as paradigm, on the march against democracy and all manner of individualism and cosmopolitanism. Along with the challenge presented by the Spartans, Popper would have us understand, was the active collusion of the class of Athenian oligarchs, which hated the democratic reforms and identified with traditional elites in the other city states, and so their party/class interest superseded their patriotism.
Openness as a Paean of Praise to Bravery
At this point, we can now safely leave Popper’s retelling of this story, the story of Athens from the Persian War to the end of the Peloponnesian War, with its fragile and short-lived democracy, and the flowering at that time of Western culture, philosophy, and science. Before turning his ire back upon Plato for a while longer, Popper takes one last rhetorical pass through the age, this time quoting extensively from Democritus and from the Funeral Oration of Pericles as a kind of a summation. The story is not a heroization of certain figures over others, however, even if it is clear that for his part, Popper admires figures like Pericles and Democritus, Protagoras and Gorgias, and yes, even Socrates. Rather, Popper’s purpose is to expose the effects of this strain, what he considers to be a perennial conflict at the heart of our Western society. A certain set of material conditions obtained; these led to certain developments; the developments gave rise to a certain kind of consciousness, a new spirit if you will, which in turn was realized in certain political arrangements and cultural forms and practices. In parallel to all of this, there as a reaction, by traditionalists, and by oligarchs who sought to protect their privilege.
The Spartan Laconians, with their total culture of military discipline, defeat the messy and undisciplined Athenians, and democracy and the spirit of openness, of democracy and open-ended criticism, does not appear again for millennia. And yet, Sparta disappears almost without a trace, leaving only a few dusty pots and bronzes from the sixth century BCE, a few architectural foundations, and no voices of play writes, philosophers, statesmen, and scientists resounding across the centuries. The sociologist John Hall has written that the Open Society can usefully be seen as a paean of praise to bravery. I think he is very correct in saying this. Popper’s deepest intention is the exhortation, both moral and prudential, to fully realize the meaning of the Latin phrase sapere aude or “dare to know,” or even better, “dare to think for yourself!” Popper wants us to see that the rigid, apparently hard, in the end becomes brittle and thus weak, and the supple, apparently soft, in the end is flexible and thus strong.
As Ian Jarvie has pointed out, there are no real societies at the poles of open and closed (except maybe North Korea).
The sort of historical sociology that Popper is practicing here, in 1940, is certainly a kind of a relic; it belonged to the intellectual culture of the Weimar Republic, and its practitioners fled Germany and the Nazis to places like the United States, where it never really took hold given the ubiquity of empirical social research at mid-century and beyond. I am not a social scientist, so it’s hard to say if this sort of work is making a comeback, or whether it even should. The project is obviously unabashedly value-laden. As Ian Jarvie has pointed out, there are no real societies at the poles of open and closed (except maybe North Korea). The open society is a Weberian ideal type, created as a regulative ideal, something utopian given in order to orient our efforts at criticism and reform. I do know, however, that the historical situation Popper paints as being perennial (open and closed as omnipresent attitudes or tendencies, playing out as warfare between cosmopolitans and reactionaries) seems strikingly relevant to the present political moment in Western societies.
The Quarrel Between the Ancients and the Moderns
On May 26th, 2017, New York Times conservative columnist David Brooks wrote an op-ed called “The Four American Narratives.” Brooks explores four stories that are competing today for the heart and soul of the country. He identifies them as the libertarian narrative, the globalization narrative, the multi-cultural narrative, and the America First narrative. After describing each in turn, Brooks says that he doesn’t find any of them to be a viable narrative for effective self-governance in the 21st century. He goes on to say that, following Michael Lind in “The New Class War,” he thinks that the future of American politics will actually turn on a competition between two other narratives that derive from the four previously described.
The first is the mercantilist model, which Brooks says “…sees America not as the culmination of history but as one major power in competition with rival powers, like China, Russia, Europe and so on. In this, to be American is to be a member of the tribe, and the ideal American is the burly protector of his tribe.” Under this model, he writes, America’s government and corporations should work closely together to “protect our jobs” and beat back rival powers. Immigration and trade should be closely controlled and foreign entanglements reduced. America’s elites would have an incentive to share wealth with America’s workers because they need them to fight off their common foes.
The second is the talented community model. This story, Brooks says, “…sees America as history’s greatest laboratory for the cultivation of human abilities. This model welcomes diversity, meritocracy, immigration and open trade for all the dynamism these things unleash…and invests massively in human capital.”
Concluding his op-ed, Brooks writes this: “the mercantilist model sees America as a new Rome, a mighty fortress in a dangerous world. The talented community sees America as a new Athens, a creative crossroads leading an open and fundamentally harmonious world. It’s an Exodus story for an information age.”
Lest anyone think that looking to understand ourselves (at least in part) through the very distant mirror of antiquity is a musty academic pastime only, one need only recall that many of the leading lights of neoconservatism over the past half century studied under classicist Leo Strauss and his students at the University of Chicago, and that the brain trust of Trumpism (if you want to call it that) is presently found at the University of Chicago West, also known as Claremont McKenna. Or, if you prefer, you could just read David Brooks in the New York Times.
In the next and final installment of this post, having completed my rather long detour through Popper’s critical rationalism and his historical sociology, I return to the main theme of the Open Society and Its Frenemies–Who are the enemies of the Open Society today? What does it mean to try to defend the ideals of the open society, knowing that its enemies come from within our own polity, when the enemy is in fact ourselves?
