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The Open Society in Theory and Practice pp 1–25Cite as

Preliminary Reflections on the Open Society: Bergson, Popper, Voegelin

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Let me briefly explain why I chose to begin our conference with a consideration of Bergson, Popper, and Voegelin. So far as I am aware, it was Henri Bergson who first employed the term “the open society” in print, in a book published in French in 1932 and translated into English in 1935.1 After Bergson, it is logical to move to Karl Popper’s The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945), which did so much to give the phrase wide currency in the English-speaking world, but which differs from Bergson’s treatment in significant respects. Finally, Eric Voegelin, consciously drawing inspiration from but also modifying Bergson, has made the “open society” a key concept in his important philosophy of history in his magnum opus now in progress, Order and History, and in other writings.

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References

  1. Henri Bergson, Les deux sources de la morale et de la religion (Paris, Felix Alcan, 1932), translated as Two Sources of Morality and Religion by R. A. Andra and C. Brereton (New York, Holt, 1935).

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  2. Ibid., p. 22.

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  3. Ibid., pp. 23–24.

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  4. Ibid., p. 24.

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  5. Ibid. Emphasis added.

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  6. Ibid., p. 25.

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  7. Ibid., p. 26.

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  8. Ibid.

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  9. Ibid., p. 28.

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  10. Ibid., p. 32.

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  11. Ibid., p. 30.

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  12. Ibid.

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  13. Ibid., pp. 30–31.

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  14. Ibid., p. 44.

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  15. Ibid.

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  16. Ibid. p. 256.

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  17. Ibid., p. 56.

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  18. Ibid., p. 45.

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  19. Ibid.

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  20. Ibid., p. 44.

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  21. Ibid., pp. 54, 68. Plotinus in particular is hailed as a representative of the open society. Bergson does not entirely ignore non-Western contributions (he cites Buddhism, for example), but his discussion is insufficient to indicate their quality and extent.

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  22. Ibid., p. 69.

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  23. Ibid., p. 75.

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  24. Ibid., p. 78.

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  25. Ibid., p. 55.

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  26. Ibid., p. 53.

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  27. Ibid.

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  28. Ibid., p. 29.

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  29. Ibid.

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  30. Ibid., p. 255.

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  31. Ibid., p. 75.

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  32. Ibid., p. 59.

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  33. Ibid., p. 42.

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  34. Ibid., p. 300.

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  37. Ibid., p. 270.

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  38. John H. Hallowell, The Moral Foundations of Democracy (University of Chicago Press, 1954).

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  40. Ibid., p. 271.

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  41. Ibid.

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  42. Ibid., p. 300.

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  43. Ibid., p. 276.

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  44. Ibid., p. 300.

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  45. Ibid., p. 301.

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  46. Ibid., p. 271.

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  47. Ibid., p. 298.

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  48. Ibid., p. 296.

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  49. Ibid., p. 306 (End).

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  50. Karl R. Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1950), Preface, p. ix. (In two parts: all but the final quotation are from Part I.)

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  51. Ibid., I, Notes, p. 202.

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  52. Ibid., I, pp. 174–175.

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  53. Ibid., p. 175.

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  54. Ibid. Popper does not elaborate on this last reference to “spiritual bonds.” Did he foresee a new religiousness?

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  55. Ibid., p. 176.

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  56. Ibid.

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  57. Ibid.

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  58. Ibid., p. 175. One page later, however, he makes the puzzling statement that the “revolution was not made consciously,” but was the result of “population growth” and rapid social change. What is philosophy if it is not self-conscious thought?

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  65. Ibid., p. 194. Antisthenes, of course, was the founder of the Cynic School. It is rather surprising to see Popper hailing the founder of Cynicism, who delighted in iconoclasm and exhibitionism, as a champion of “rational criticism.” See L. Edelstein, The Meaning of Stoicism (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1966), for a discussion of Antisthenes.

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  66. Ibid., p. 198.

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  67. Ibid., p. 199.

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  68. Ibid., pp. 200–201.

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  69. Ibid., p. 201.

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  70. Ibid., II, end.

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  71. Eric Voegelin, “Immortality: Experience and Symbol,” 40 Harvard Theological Review (July, 1967), pp. 235–279, at 239.

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  72. Voegelin, “Equivalences of Experience and Symbolization in History,” unpublished ms., p. 7. (To be published in Volume IV of Order and History Louisiana State University Press. I am most appreciative of Professor Voegelin’s willingness to share this essay with me.)

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  73. Voegelin, Order and History, II: The World of the Polis (3 volumes, Baton Rouge, Louisiana State University Press, 1957), p. 1. “The initial leap in being, the break with the order of the myth, occurs in a plurality of parallel instances, in Israel and Hellas, in China and India….” Ibid., p. 3.

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  74. Gregor Sebba, “The ‘Leap in Being’. Eric Voegelin’s Construction of History,” unpublished ms., pp. 1–2. (To be published in the Proceedings of the Symposium in honor of Voegelin, University of Notre Dame, April 28–29, 1971.)

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  75. Ibid., p. 4.

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  76. Voegelin, Order and History, II, p. 5.

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  77. Voegelin, Order and History, I: Israel and Revelation (3 volumes, Baton Rouge, Louisiana State University Press, 1956), p. 11.

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  78. Henri Bergson, Two Sources of Morality and Religion, p. 59.

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Authors
  1. Dante Germino
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Virginia, USA

    Dante Germino

  2. Heidelberg University, Germany

    Klaus Von Beyme

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© 1974 Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, Netherlands

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Germino, D. (1974). Preliminary Reflections on the Open Society: Bergson, Popper, Voegelin. In: Germino, D., Von Beyme, K. (eds) The Open Society in Theory and Practice. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-2056-5_1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-2056-5_1

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht

  • Print ISBN: 978-90-247-1630-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-94-010-2056-5

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