The Chancellor's Lecture for 1995 Karl Popper's The Open Society and its Enemies in the Contemporary Global World

Abstract

Chancellor, Distinguished Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen,

Some time ago a wise old man came to see me in Prague and !listened to him with admiration. Shortly afterwards I heard that this man had died . His name was Karl Popper. He was a world traveler who followed the biggest war ever waged by humankind - the war unleashed by the tribal fury of Nazi ideology - from this country, from New Zealand. It was here that he thought about the state of the world, and it was here that he wrote his most important books. Undoubtedly influenced by the harmonious co-existence of people of different cultures on these islands, he posed the question why it was so difficult for the idea of an open society to prevail against wave after wave of tribalism, and inquired into the spiritual background of all enemies of open society and into the patterns of their thinking. Addressing you on this ceremonial occasion, I should like to offer a few remarks on Sir Karl Popper's thoughts and thus pay tribute to the recently deceased thinker.