Description
A mere two decades ago it was widely assumed that liberal democracy and the Open Society it created had decisively won their century-long struggle against authoritarianism. Although subsequent events have shocked many, F.A. Hayek would not have been surprised that we are in many ways disoriented by the society we have created. As he understood it, the Open Society was a precarious achievement in many ways at odds with our deepest moral sentiments. His path-breaking analyses argued that the Open Society runs against our evolved attraction to "tribalism" that the Open Society is too complex for moral justification; and that its self-organized complexity defies attempts at democratic governance.In his final, wide-ranging book, Gerald Gaus critically reexamines Hayek's analyses. Drawing on diverse work in social and moral science, Gaus argues that Hayek's program was manifestly prescient and strikingly sophisticated, always identifying real and pressing problems. Yet, Gaus maintains, Hayek underestimated the resources of human morality and the Open Society to cope with the challenges he perceived. Gaus marshals formal models and empirical evidence to show that our Open Society is grounded on moral foundations of human cooperation originating in our distant evolutionary past, but has built upon them a complex and diverse society that requires us to rethink both the nature of moral justification and the meaning of democratic self-governance. In these fearful, angry and inwardly-looking times, when political philosophy has itself become a hostile exchange between ideological camps, The Open Society and Its Complexities shows how moral and ideological diversity, so far from being the enemy of a free and open society, can be its foundation.
Table of Contents
PrefaceProlegomenon: Hayek's Three Unsettling Theses1. Beyond Human Nature?2. Beyond Moral Justification?3. Beyond Human Governance?4. Three Enquiries on The Open SocietyPart I: The Rise of a Normative Species5. A Natural History of Moral Order6. The "Starting Point"7. The Egalitarian Revolution8. Self-Interest, Reciprocity and Altruism9. Internalized, Enforced, Social Rules10. The Other Side of Morality11. Cultural Evolution12. The Rise and (Partial) Fall of Inequality13. A Complex Moral SpeciesPart II: The Diversity and Self-Organized Complexity14. Liberalism and the Open Society15. Understanding Diversity16. Autocatalytic Diversity17. Diversity and Complexity18. The Morality of Self-Organization19. The Social Contract20. A Self-Organization Model21. Moral Diversity in The Open SocietyPart III: The Complexities of Self-Governance22. Self-Governance23. Macro Control24. Macro Structure25. Strategic Dilemmas and Polycentricity26. Meso-Level Goal Pursuit27. Sectoral Policy28. Self-Governance from The Bottom-Up: Simplifying The Problems Of Governance29. Our Moral Nature and Governance in the Open Society30. Liberal DemocracyEpilogueAppendix AAppendix BBibliography
