OSUN Talks 3: Popper in Critical Conversation—Arendt, Berlin, Shklar, and the Open Society
Friday, October 1, 2021
9:00 am – 11:00 am EDT/GMT-4 Online Event
9–11 AM New York l 3–5 PM Vienna
The Open Society Research Platform welcomes OSUN members to attend an online panel discussion on the writings of Hannah Arendt, Isaiah Berlin, and Judith Shklar on the concept of the Open Society.
Speakers
Roger Berkowitz (Bard College)
Oseni Afisi (Lagos State University)
Allison Stanger (Middlebury College)
Moderator
Christof Royer (Central European University)
Aims and Purposes
The reviewers of the (relatively) recent Cambridge Companion to Popper (2016) tartly observe that scholarship on Karl Popper resembles a "closed society" as this literature is characterized by a "near total failure" to bring Popper and his concepts in conversation with thinkers and ideas in the near temporal and intellectual space. The purpose of this discussion is to take important steps to remedy this shortcoming.
The first aim is to initiate a critical conversation between Karl Popper, who popularized the concept of "open society" in The Open Society and Its Enemies, and mid-20th-century thinkers, who wrote in a common tradition of antitotalitarian thought, and whose works overlap but also diverge in important ways from Popper’s account of Open Society.
Particularly important interlocutors here—and, indeed, the theorists on which this workshop focuses—are Hannah Arendt, Judith Shklar, and Isaiah Berlin. Through a critical conversation between these thinkers, we hope to achieve a clearer picture of the potential meaning(s) and content of the concept of Open Society.
The second aim is to link this critical discussion to the present moment. As such, this workshop is not an exercise in either abstract political philosophy or intellectual history but rather an attempt to harness the ideas and insights of these theorists to think through and address contemporary problems. The aim is to show why and how a critical engagement with the concept of Open Society matters today.
Format
This is the third event in a series of workshops/discussions on the concept of Open Society. The event is planned as a workshop with a set of preformulated questions that speakers will respond to. Subsequently, there will be a Q & A in which members of the audience can make comments or ask questions.
The event will be online. Preregistration is not required and everybody is welcome to attend.
Join via Zoom
Website: https://ceu-edu.zoom.us/j/92821969856?pwd=TlhDV1A2S1VRc002Q29BS2p4eVdKQT09#success