ABSTRACT
Karl Popper’s theory of the attraction of the closed society has attracted little critical attention, because it is intuitively attractive. According to Popper’s theory all individuals have an innate desire to live in a closed society. The core of Popper’s theory contains the possibilities of building a better theory of the causes and attraction of totalitarianism. Popper’s theory that civilized individuals need to decide in favour of the open society and the intensity of his moral exhortations to do so give the appearance that The Open Society and Its Enemies contains a well integrated moral appeal. A corollary of Popper’s theory of closed and open societies is the thesis that after an open society has arisen, any attempt to recreate a closed society will lead to barbarism. When Popper’s students began developing new theories of rationality and new philosophical anthropological views based on them, they sought to generalize the new fallibilist theory of science.
