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From June 28 until July 4, 1972, a group of scholars, all of them acade micians committed to the critical study of man and society which may be called political theory, met at The Rockefeller Foundation's VillaSerbelloni in Bellagio, Italy, to present papers on and discuss the subject of "The Open Society. " These papers, as revised, are published here, most of them for the first time. They reflect no consensus of view, nor were they intended to do so. That such a consensus did not emerge from the conference is not in our judgment a cause for regret; it may rather be regarded as a manifestation of a healthy and desirable plurality of approaches which itself indirectly tells us something important about the nature of the open society. All the papers deal in different contexts and from a variety of philosophi cal and theoretical perspectives with the interrelated themes of openness and the open society. Some of the panelists are skeptical of the capacity of modern industrial, or "post-industrial," society, with its heavy emphasis upon technological rationality to foster authentic openness under currently prevailing assumptions about man and nature.
List of contents
1. Preliminary Reflections on the Open Society: Bergson, Popper, Voegelin.- 2. Political Obligation and the Open Society.- 3. Political Society and the Open Society: Bergsonian Views.- 4. The Open World and Culture Change: Sacred and Secular Trends.- 5. Visions and Explanations, Four Perspectives on Education and Work.- 6. Some Views of the Closed Society.- 7. Authoritarian Regimes - Developing Open Societies?.- 8. Liberalism and the Open Society.- 9. The Liberal Theory of the Open Society.- 10. Imperfect Legitimacy.- 11. The Revolt Against the Open Society and the Phenomenon of Delegitimization: The Case of the American New Left.- 12. Marxism and the Open Society.- 13. Ideology, Openness and Freedom.- 14. The Higher Reaches of the Lower Orders: A Critique of the Theories of B. F. Skinner.- 15. Psychiatric Responsibility in the Open Society.- 16. Neither Sticks Nor Stones.- 17. The Ecology of Openness.
