Klassicism, Kitsch, Kraus and Katastrophe
James Fairhead, University College Cork
‘The individual cannot help his age, he can only express that it is doomed’ Kierkegaard
The terminology ‘Open Society’ admits to a multiplicity of meanings and implications. From a Voegelinian classical perspective, this might, of itself, be of only semantic interest, were it not for the fact that the symbol is laden with quite positive connotations which are all the more attractive for their vagueness, and all the more open to tendentious ideological deployment within the realm of modern politics and society more generally, notably within organizations. Some of these meanings and implications are explored as a way of contrasting a Platonic, Voegelinian and Bergsonian conception of openness with the modernist sort of openness espoused by Popper and identified at the level of the individual and organization by a range of psychological and organization theorists. In the attempt to realize such a vision, all manner of nonsense is practiced and talked about in organizations, in a mode that has tellingly been described as kitsch, a mode which more broadly has been described as ‘one of the key philosophical problems of modernity’ (Linstead 2002). While there are grounds for optimism about the future impact of kitsch, a more pessimistic interpretation would follow from drawing an analogy with the analysis of Austrian satirist and poet Karl Kraus (1874-1936) who presciently saw such practices to be indicative of impending social and political catastrophe. (This paper will be presented in a multi-media format).