The Love Society and Its Enemies

Written by Karl Popper after he fled Austria in the late 1930s, The Open Society and Its Enemies was published as World War II ended. The book attained canonical status as an explanation of the totalitarian temptation, and it provided a template for the reconstruction of the West after the war.

In the late 1980s, the waning years of the Cold War, I read The Open Society and Its Enemies. Born and raised in the postwar consensus that Popper had done so much to shape, I made favorable comments in the margins. The basic dichotomy—open versus closed—seemed entirely correct. Isn’t “openness” the fundamental virtue of the West, as opposed to the “closed” world of ideological conformity?

I re-read The Open Society and Its Enemies a few years ago when I sat down to write Return of the Strong Gods. My reaction then was quite different. I recoiled from Popper’s blunt attacks on Plato’s subtle efforts to incite in us a love of truth. Blinded by his hatred of oppression, Popper could not see the positive role played by a rapturous ardor for transcendence. We need love’s demands if we are ever to put aside convenient truisms and comfortable self-deceptions. I finished the book with dismay. Popper’s vision for the future of humanity amounts to a loveless world of soulless technocrats engaged in the equitable distribution of utilities to people who imagine that the highest virtue is to believe in nothing strongly enough to do anyone harm.

Nevertheless, the book retains an allure for me. Popper wrote with a paradoxical passion unwarranted by his own philosophy of self-skeptical scientism. His urgency motivates me to imagine penning a response: The Love Society and Its Enemies.

Any such book must begin with Lucretius, a Roman poet and philosopher who lived in the century before Christ. Little is known of him, aside from the fact that he authored De rerum natura (On the Nature of Things), a long poem in epic style that expounds the doctrines of Epicurean philosophy.

Epicurus was an ancient Greek philosopher. He taught that reality is nothing more than tiny, invisible atoms revolving in space. To some degree, Epicurus purports to base his materialist philosophy on observation. But his overriding purpose was paradoxically spiritual. He wished to attain tranquility, the cessation of turbulent desires and destabilizing fears. The conviction that the universe is nothing more than purposeless matter delivers this condition of the soul. We are not aroused by love of truth or beauty, for such ideals do not exist. We are not disappointed or angered by injustices or moral transgressions, for there is no such thing as justice or morality.

Inspired by Epicurus, Lucretius wrote De rerum ­natura as a work of poetic-philosophical therapy. The heroic hexameter of the poem invites readers into a world in which nothing matters, because there is only matter. Agitated by romantic desire or in despair after being jilted by a lover? Read Book IV and you will be taught that sex is just coital friction, a purely physical phenomenon in which no reasonable person (having become convinced of the truth of materialism) invests emotional attachments. Concerned about death and the afterlife? Read Book III and you will learn that the soul is material, and it dies with the body, making death nothing to fear. In these and other ways, the philosophy of materialism offers consolation: Reality is blind, soulless, and purposeless, so there’s nothing to worry about.

Philosophical materialism of the sort put into verse by Lucretius is not an obscure ancient philosophy. It’s a habit of mind that is widespread in our age. Richard Dawkins tells us that evolution is a blind watchmaker. Economists presume the primacy of material interests. The recent pandemic revealed that our age regards physical survival as the highest good. Lucretius helps us see that we adopt such views in large part because they provide emotional freedom. We are released from the agony of love’s drive toward transcendence. If nothing is worth sacrificing for, we won’t need to make any sacrifices.

Machiavelli certainly deserves a chapter in The Love Society and Its Enemies. He cautions against love’s tendency to override cold calculation. The shrewd prince will not let himself get carried away by virtuous ardor for noble ideals. He keeps his eye on man’s animal needs, especially our keen desire to avoid death. The Machiavellian ruler is ruthless and cunning, the better to attain and maintain power.

Thomas Hobbes offers similar counsel. He cautions against love’s often destructive zeal. Unlike ­Machiavelli, however, Hobbes does more than educate rulers in the science of cold political realism. Whereas Lucretius articulates a therapy that promises a tranquil soul ­untroubled by hopes and undisturbed by ideals, Hobbes theorizes the conditions for a tranquil body politic. He envisions a social contract to which we will be loyal insofar as we think always of death. In the ideal society, rather than looking upward to higher things, we are encouraged to fix our minds on survival. This downward focus prevents us from disrupting the body politic with theological disputes inflamed by ardent faith. 

There are other, less dire forms of Hobbes’s loveless materialism. They seek to direct our soul’s desires toward economic gain or physical pleasures. John Rawls gave influential expression to the liberal tradition in A Theory of Justice. Our loves engage us, shaping us into distinct persons with defining loyalties. Rawls aimed to base the social consensus on what we share. The central device of his theory is the “veil of ignorance,” the condition of not knowing oneself in one’s particularity—not knowing one’s loves. Justice, he argues, must be based on the lowest common denominators. Differences from Hobbes aside, the therapy of Rawlsian liberalism (and most other forms) is similar: Keep men’s aims low, and life will be untroubled. Build society on the promise of greater and more just distribution of utilities, not on shared loves and common loyalties.

The Love Society and Its Enemies needs a chapter on ­Jeremy Bentham, too. His mechanical, machine-like mind manifested an autistic indifference to love, and his utilitarian philosophy sees no good greater than material improvement. It’s a testimony to John Stuart Mill’s intelligence and humanity that, having been educated in Bentham’s utilitarianism to the exclusion of traditional knowledge and spiritual instruction, he had a nervous breakdown. Reading the poetry of ­Wordsworth and Coleridge gave him consolation and opened his eyes to the larger, non-material purposes of life. 

There have been many varieties of Benthamite reductionism in the modern era. Milton Friedman was a fundamentally decent man, but he, too, trafficked in a materialist outlook. Ayn Rand was anything but decent. She encouraged power-worship, which she disguised in her writings as a defense of freedom.

Karl Marx was a great enemy of love. In his theory, every aspect of society reflects its economic base, which means that the (in his view) fundamental injustice of capitalism infects everything. Condemnation thunders throughout Marx’s work. The only reality worthy of our loyalty is found in the future. Nothing that is, here and now, is worthy of our love. Revolutionary zeal aims at the destruction of injustice; love must wait for the arrival of true justice, which is always over the horizon.

In the twenty-first century, few subscribe to Marxism. But nearly all teachers in the humanities and social sciences aim to inculcate the ersatz virtue of “critical thinking.” This pedagogy purports to ferret out the falsehoods, deceptions, and ideological constructs that mask power and privilege. Although the “science” of historical materialism long ago fell by the wayside, Marx’s moralistic hatred of the status quo continues to operate. It burns the fields, which, true enough, often have in them toxic weeds. But “critical thinking” cannot plant, cultivate, and harvest. “Critical thinking” never gets around to the practice of truth-seeking that culminates in contemplation, the disposition of the mind that relishes and enjoys truths that are elusive but real—or better, elusive because they are real.

At his best, Karl Popper recognized man’s spiritual need for freedom. Unfortunately, his campaign against the sources of oppression was too systematic, too complete. A love society is not indifferent to utility. We are embodied creatures. Preventing untimely death and providing for the needs of others are always among love’s duties. A love society, too, allows critical reason to test and purify the heart’s ardent longings. But utility and critical reason are not sufficient. We are made for higher things. A love society teaches us that there are purposes, projects, and people for which and for whom it is worth bearing all things, believing all things, hoping all things, and enduring all things (1 Cor. 13:7).

Love makes us vulnerable. The enemies of the love society promise to protect us. We will not be deceived about truth—because we know there is no truth to which we must be loyal. We will not be manipulated—because we recognize that there is nothing to fear or desire. We will not suffer betrayal—because we will not venture love’s gift of self. Epicurus and his followers are certainly correct: It is painful to suffer deception, manipulation, and betrayal. But we cannot eliminate these and other perils of the soul without renouncing love, which means disfiguring our humanity.

A love society answers our need for transcendence, which has social as well as personal and religious dimensions. True, men often love wrongly. In a fallen world, the love society is not perfect. It will be marred by injustices and at times convulsed by disordered passions. But at least it will be human.