Scribd
Upload
24 views2 pages

The Open Society and Its Enemies

Klosko's work examines Jacobin thought, highlighting their use of state power for societal transformation and critiquing the limitations of spontaneity in enacting change. He contrasts Jacobins with reformers, suggesting that both share visions of a better society but differ in their approaches. The review raises questions about Klosko's analysis, particularly regarding the absence of Hannah Arendt's perspectives and the need to consider right-wing equivalents to Jacobin ideals.

Uploaded by

haideralij411
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
24 views2 pages

The Open Society and Its Enemies

Klosko's work examines Jacobin thought, highlighting their use of state power for societal transformation and critiquing the limitations of spontaneity in enacting change. He contrasts Jacobins with reformers, suggesting that both share visions of a better society but differ in their approaches. The review raises questions about Klosko's analysis, particularly regarding the absence of Hannah Arendt's perspectives and the need to consider right-wing equivalents to Jacobin ideals.

Uploaded by

haideralij411
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 2

unarmed prophets fail.

Marx joins Fourier and Bakunin as


theorists of spontaneity. Less surprisingly, Robespierre (with
St. Just) and Lenin (at least Lenin from late 1918 onward)
appear as the leading Jacobins: Like Lycurgus and Plato, the
Jacobins are educational realists who see the need to use state
power to transform education and society if people are to be
made virtuous. Klosko probes their thought to discern seven
major components of Jacobin thinking.
Because of Klosko’s focus on strategies for change, his book
is a welcome additional perspective to studies of fundamental
change. The author’s conclusions complement Karl Popper’s
famous argument (The Open Society and Its Enemies, 1945)
that utopian blueprints lead to “dictatorial societal disasters”
(p. 52). For Klosko, those who advocate spontaneity or persuasion
are unable convincingly to explain how such changes
will occur; and modern educational realists find themselves
giving the state extraordinary power without being able—as
was Plato in the Republic—to establish checks on the abuse of
that power.
Any book covering so much material in such a brief space
will lead its readers to questions and further issues. I raise
three.
Klosko’s range from Lycurgus to Lenin is impressive and
gives insights, but—given his criticisms of those trying to
generate fundamental moral reform—I wish that he had also
examined Hannah Arendt’s On Revolution (1972). In Klosko’s
terms, Arendt criticizes the Jacobins—they undercut or stifle
revolutionary energy and novelty—and she appeals to the
experiences of modern revolutions since 1776 to show that
spontaneity and persuasion can generate new modes of interaction
and institutions. So her conclusions stand, I think,
opposed to Klosko’s and need examination.
Klosko happily avoids many of the definitional quibbles
that can stall or divert scholarly analysis, especially of ideal
societies. But in at least two places, definitional problems exist.
He states that the Jacobins, like many utopians, have a “plan
or blueprint” (p. 92) of their utopia, and their utopia is “a
human condition that is totally new by any standard”
(pp. 4, 172). On both counts, the Jacobins differ from reformers,
who, like Popper, pursue “piecemeal social engineering”
(p. 52) aimed at specific and limited changes (not “totally
new” ones). I think that Klosko (following other scholars) here
is setting up dichotomies that hide continuities among many
reformers from Popperians to Leninists—they usually have a
vision of a good society and a sense of how it connects to contemporary
society. As Klosko’s discussion of Machiavelli suggests,
his book could be profitably reread as an exploration of
problems faced by many different types of reformers, from
Solon through John Stuart Mill to the present.
Third, and in part because Klosko analyzes the usual suspects
in the modern world—the Jacobins—he does not ask
about “right-wing” equivalents to the Jacobins, theorists and
actors whose “new state of being” for a future “without the
problems and strife of existing society” (p. 172) is either global
free trade with assured property rights or social and religious
conservatism, and some of whom, in order to bring

You might also like