The Open Society And Its Dilemma——a Review On Popper’s Political Philosophy

Karl Raimund Popper, one of the most important ideologists and philosophers in the twentieth century. He was well known for his falsifiability criteria, which he considered as the solution to the problem of demarcating science from pseudoscience. Due to the publication of his most influential work, the Open Society and its Enemies, which was against totalitarianism, Popper rose to fame swiftly during the Second World War, and consequently, was regarded as "the father of the Open Society".Popper’s Open Society Theory was established on falsifiability criteria and trial-and-error method, both of which rooted in his scientific philosophy. The guiding principle of the whole idea in the Open Society Theory was formulated by critical rationalism characteristic. Based on the criticism over historicism and utopianism from the perspective of logic, Popper suggested that the methodology of holism might cause severe harm to society. At this point, Popper advocated using Open Society which emphasizes liberty and individual values to resist threats coming from Closed Society. He believed that the formulation of Open Society’s principles and framework relied on the settlement of the paradox of dominion, democracy, liberty and tolerance. Besides, he replaced utopia social engineering with piecemeal social engineering as the right way towards Open Society. Among all his political thoughts, the transference of sovereignty issues and the reinterpretation of democracy had promoted the development of democratic society; the state interventionism had be inherited by liberalists; the view as to local and moderate social reform had played significant role on social peace and development.Taking advantage of the theoretical basis of epistemology and methodology, the concept distinction between close and open, the fundamental principles of liberty, democracy and state intervention, and the piecemeal and moderate construction method, this paper aims to explore Popper’s system info of Open Society, and then, to seek for its value in political philosophy. Moreover, considering the sense that the issue of Open Society is still in discussion, this paper, based on the development of previous theories since the Second World War and the analysis of reality, tries to explore the difficulties, involving the obstacles and costs in Open Society, for the rethink of the Open Society Theory.