Abstract

At the end of World War II Karl Popper, at the time a little known philosopher of science, published The Open Society and Its Enemies. He dedicated the book to the victims of both Hitler's and Stalin's camps and called it his “war effort.” The book had an enormous impact and spawned both imitators, such as Hannah Arendt's The Origins of Totalitarianism, and a great deal of debate. Whatever else it accomplished Popper's work politicized the history of ideas. Against the devastation of the war Popper refused to grant either innocence or quietude to the history of philosophy. He argued that ways of thinking and talking had terrible consequences; that philosophers legitimated terrible damage in their seemingly abstract inquiry.