ABSTRACT
The shadow of the totalitarian state looms long in The Open Society and Its Enemies, and Popper's work may be taken as an attempt to account for this twentieth-century nightmare. But his explanation has a particular one-sidedness that is probably inevitable from a philosopher of science: for all its digressions, it is at bottom epistemological. The inescapable implication of Popper's work is that the fundamental affliction of ‘closed societies’ is a deep epistemological error: a dogmatic mindset. In tandem, the vital and defining grace of a liberal society in Popper's estimate is its healthily critical attitude. The vigour of these implications is barely circumscribed by Popper's adherence to ‘situational logic’ or even his statement that, if he had to choose, he would side with materialism over idealism (Popper 1945, ii, 110). To Popper, Stalin's state was a ‘practical consequence’ of Marx's philosophy of prophecy (Popper 1945, ii, 144–5).
