The CEU Lectures: Lecture Three, George Soros on Open Society
George Soros on Wednesday, October 28, 2009, delivered the third of The CEU Lectures on “The Economy, Reflexivity and Open Society” that reflect the culmination of a lifetime of thinking on finance, politics and open society.
In his lecture George Soros introduced the third pillar of his conceptual framework, that of ‘open society’. He shared with the audience his views, which have changed over time, regarding the concept of open society, and as they are still evolving, will also develop in the future.
‘Open society is a desirable form of social organization both as a means to an end and as an end in itself,’ stated Soros. It enables a society to understand the problems confronting it and to deal with them more successfully than other forms of social organizations provided.
‘The connection between open society and reflexivity is close on a personal level, but on a conceptual level is only indirect,’ noted Soros. ‘It is fallibility, the first pillar of reflexivity that provides the link between the other two,’ he argued.
‘Since perfect knowledge is beyond the scope of the human intellect, a society characterized by the freedom of speech and thought and free elections is preferable to a society which imposes its ideology by force,’ said Soros quoting Popper’s description of open society.
However, George Soros contends, in a democracy political discourse is aimed at discovering reality, because the manipulative function of human thinking could take precedence over the cognitive function. Indeed, in a democracy, the primary objective of politicians is to get elected and stay in power. The instrumental value of democracy is conditional on the qualities of the electorate. ‘But quite apart from that, open society also has an intrinsic value, namely the freedom of the individual, which applies whether open society flourishes or not,’ added Soros.
Video and transcript
- See this lecture and Q&A session on the Financial Times website here: http://www.ft.com/soroslectures
- Additional information about the series and full transcripts are provided by the Financial Times on the following summary page: http://www.ft.com/indepth/soros-lectures