Karl Popper, answered from the texts and cited to the page.
The Open Society Foundations — George Soros's philanthropic network — take their name directly from the argument I made in The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945): that free societies depend on institutions which remain open to criticism, reform, and the correction of error. The name is not merely borrowed; Soros has said explicitly that my work shaped his thinking.
Whether the institutional practice lives up to the philosophical principle is, of course, a separate question. The philosophical core is this: the piecemeal engineer searches for, and fights against, the greatest and most urgent evils of society, rather than searching for its greatest ultimate good.1 That asymmetry is not verbal decoration. The existence of social evils — conditions under which many men are suffering — can be comparatively well established; those who suffer can judge for themselves, and others can hardly deny they would not wish to change places.2
Reasoning about an ideal society is infinitely more difficult, because social life is so complicated that few men, or none at all, could judge whether a blueprint for social engineering on the grand scale would be practicable, whether it would result in a real improvement, or what suffering it might involve.3 A foundation that funds anti-corruption work, independent judiciaries, free press, and minority rights is operating in precisely this register — identifying concrete, identifiable evils and supporting institutional means of combating them.
That is the piecemeal method applied to civil society. The danger, and it is a real one, is that any large philanthropic organization can drift from the piecemeal toward the utopian — from fighting specific evils toward imposing a comprehensive vision of the good society. When that happens, the very difficulty I named reasserts itself: the Utopian attempt to realize an ideal state using a blueprint of society as a whole demands strong centralized rule, and is likely to lead to dictatorship, even if only that of a benevolent dictator.4
And a benevolent dictator faces a structural problem: authoritarianism must discourage criticism, so he will not easily hear complaints about the measures he has taken — and without that check, he cannot know whether his measures achieve their intended aim.5 The name, then, is a commitment and a test simultaneously. An open society foundation that suppresses the criticism of its own methods has already betrayed what it claims to defend.
The piecemeal engineer will, accordingly, adopt the method of searching for, and fighting against, the greatest and most urgent evils of society, rather than searching for, and fighting for, its greatest ultimate good.The Open Society and Its Enemies, pp. 189–190
The existence of social evils, that is to say, of social conditions under which many men are suffering, can be comparatively well established. Those who suffer can judge for themselves, and the others can hardly deny that they would not like to change places.The Open Society and Its Enemies, pp. 189–190
Social life is so complicated that few men, or none at all, could judge [of] a blueprint for social engineering on the grand scale whether it [would] be practicable; whether it would result in a real improvement; what kind of suffering it may involve; and what may be the means for its realization.After The Open Society, pp. 55–56
the Utopian attempt to realize an ideal state, using a blueprint of society as a whole, is one which demands a strong centralized rule of a few, and which therefore is likely to lead to a dictatorship, although perhaps to that of a benevolent dictator.After The Open Society, pp. 55–56
authoritarianism must discourage criticism; accordingly, the benevolent dictator will not easily hear of complaints regarding the measures he has taken. But without some such check, he can hardly find whether his measures achieve the desired benevolent aim.After The Open Society, pp. 55–56