New perspectives on open society

Abstract

This issue of New Perspectives examines the concept of Open Societies. The issue and introduction has been guest edited by Christof Royer of the Central European University, who leads the Open Society Research Platform, with each individual submission independently peer reviewed. In this introduction, we set out the relevance of the concept of open societies for New Perspectives Journal, and why this tangled idea deserves more than the limited interrogation it sometimes receives. Today, it has become a commonplace to point out that we live in an ‘ age of crisis ’ (Tooze 2021; Saad-Filho, 2021). Russia ’ s invasion of Ukraine has captured the headlines, overtaking the COVID-19 pandemic which has kept the world in suspense since its outbreak in 2019. Populist movements around the world claim to defend ‘ the people ’ against ‘ elites ’ while, at the same time, challenging pillars of liberal democracy. The rapid development of modern technologies challenges our ideas of human autonomy and personal responsibility. It is surely wrong to look at these phenomena in isolation. Not only because geopolitical, economic and political crises are (and always have been) interlinked (Thompson 2022), but also, as Katalin Fabian argues in her article, because they reveal deeper con fl icts about fundamental values – of the superiority of the individual over the collective, the meaning(s) of justice and human rights, or the signi fi cance of (but also the tensions between) freedom and equality. The society part an