From the Closed to the Open Society

The subject of enquiry in this chapter is the transition from the closed to the open society. To offer a sociological analysis of this transition, the chapter begins with the critical rationalist model of human action to show how human actors’ critical rationality enables them to shape the cultural, legal–political and economic mechanisms of the transition from the closed to the open society. The chapter integrates these mechanisms into a normative sociological analysis in order to provide a holistic picture of the transition in question. It also differentiates the idea of an open society from the notion of a liberal society to show why Popper has not made a substantial difference between these ideas, arguing that a sociological account of the open society, however, leads us to see such a difference. In short, the chapter argues that the transition from the closed to the open society is shaped when people activate the highest level of critical rationality, not only for questioning the basic values and institutions of the closed society, but also for replacing them with rational values and institutions which are open to criticism and are not shown to be false by negative reasons.