George Soros is a bit of a boogeyman, a bet noir, a black beast for much of the political right and some of the left, but he's also a bit of a black box because we don't really read him. So let me summarize his philosophy. In particular, let's interrogate the idea of a so-called open society — the cause Soros claims to champion, the concept he has promoted, opening up close societies, and on behalf of which he lavishes generous funding on all sorts of groups and projects now through his son.

He's a giant. He walks very small, careful steps so people don't hear him going boom, boom, boom. "If I weren't there, somebody else would be taking it away." Anyhow, I'm mainly drawing on two of Soros's works: a 97 essay, "The Capitalist Threat," and his 2000 book, "The Open Society: Reforming Global Capitalism."

Now, the term open society was coined by Henry Bergson and developed by Karl Popper. Bergson came up with open society in his 1932 book, "The Two Sources of Morality and Religion." He wrote: "Never shall we pass from closed society to the open society, from city to humanity by any mere broadening out. The two things are not of the same essence. The open society is the society which is deemed in principle to embrace all humanity, a dream now and again by chosen souls."

So Bergson writes that the closed society is natural. It is to humans what the ant hill is to ants. The open society breaks with nature. It isn't a development from the closed society, a broadening of that which is already in a traditional society. It's rather something that does violence to it. It's a break.

Karl Popper developed this concept further. Just as Bergson speaks of the open society as in principle embracing all humanity, so too Popper describes it as global. He wrote: "The idea that there exist natural units like nations or linguistic or racial groups is entirely fictitious. The state must protect the individual citizen, the international organization also must ultimately protect human individuals and not states or nations. The complete renunciation of the principle of the national state, a principle which owes its popularity to the fact that it appeals to tribal instincts, and the insight that human individuals and not states or nations must be the ultimate concern of all politics has important applications. We must realize that we treat individuals fairly even if we decide to break up the power organization of an aggressive state or nation to which these individuals belong."

As in Bergson, for Popper, past identity is to be transcended and indeed rejected. It represents the opposite of where we have to go. Bergson, Popper, and as we will see, Soros, frame the open society in radically progressive terms. Open society as Soros understands it is interchangeable to a degree with what he calls reflexivity and fallibility. So these two concepts are key for Soros.

Reflexivity describes a two-way interaction between thinking and reality, subject and object, where thoughts influence the reality they describe and vice versa, creating a feedback loop. Not in some mystical way, nothing spiritual about it, just in terms of us acting in certain ways that alter reality based on what we already think about reality. There's a dual function in thinking: the cognitive function which is to understand reality as it is, and the participatory or manipulative function which is to shape reality. Neither Popper's elegant model of scientific method nor economic theory recognized reflexivity. Popper took it for granted that in an open society the cognitive function takes precedence. In a democracy, political discourse is not aimed at discovering reality — that's the cognitive function — but getting elected and staying in power. That's the manipulative function.

And then we have fallibility, and specifically what Soros calls radical fallibility, which posits that all human constructs, ideas, institutions, ideologies are inherently flawed, deficient. In history, we end up with self-reinforcing but eventually self-defeating cycles. Belief creates reality but eventually collapses because it's deficient. It fails to reckon with certain elements of reality. Radical fallibility underpins the concept of an open society. Whereas closed societies think they know the truth or at least some grand truth. So far so reasonable, even if we disagree. But it gets deeper.

Soros writes: "Radical fallibility is the cornerstone not only of my view of the world but also of my personal identity and as such it is reflected in my behavior. It has guided my actions. If there is anything original in my thinking, it is this radical version of fallibility." Even though all mental constructs are flawed, some of them are fertile. "Fertile fallacies are the equivalent of bubbles in financial markets." This lies at the core of his own radical version of fallibility. His working assumption allows him to operate with fertile fallacies which he applies to the outside world and to his own activities — opening up close societies.

And Soros gets personal when describing this: "Radical fallibility is for me not only an abstract theory, but also a matter of deep personal conviction. As a fund manager, predominant feelings I operated with were uncertainty and fear. I had moments of hope, even euphoria. But those emotions made me insecure. Worrying made me feel safer. So the only genuine joy I experienced was when I discovered what it was that I had to worry about. I could never acknowledge my successes. It might stop me from worrying."

There's no spiritual contemplation, no rest in a positive assertion or identity or vision of beauty. Happiness makes the believer in radical fallibility feel unstable. Safety is in fear. This constant seeking after anxiety, after sources of worry, characterizes how many people live, but he made it into an ideology. This is similar, by the way, to the Frankfurt school thinker Theodor Adorno's negative dialectics, so-called. And like the Frankfurt school, Soros critiques Enlightenment reason. In particular, he values free expression over truth, or thinks of free speech and other rights not as a good way to get to the truth or to do objective good, but as a way to find fertile fallacies.

As he puts it: "It is high time to subject reason as construed by the Enlightenment to the same kind of critical examination that the Enlightenment inflicted on the dominant external authorities, both divine and temporal. We have now lived in the age of reason for the past 200 years, long enough to discover that reason has its limitations. We are ready to enter the age of fallibility."

And he does think his moral relativism will lead to specific principles: "The freedom of thought and expression and the freedom of choice can be directly derived from our fallibility. Since the ultimate truth is beyond our reach, we must allow people to think for themselves and make their own choices. I derive human rights from being a thinking agent."

So where does authority or the exercise of power come in? Well, it's not enough to avoid the closed society, you also have to avoid total chaos. You need to have some control. Soros writes: "Instead of a dichotomy between open and closed societies, I now envision open society occupying a precarious middle ground. Some that would impose a closed society, others that would lead to the disintegration of society." Similarly, Soros rejects both capitalism and communism. So, while "the open society, like democracy, is a way of living together, not a blueprint for solving particular social problems," so not a closed society, the concept of open society is not empty. It's not social disintegration. Indeed, he says that it now needs to be redefined to include more than just freedom from officially imposed orthodoxy.

But how can recognition of our fallibility serve as the basis of a whole social order? Can we promote a belief in our own fallibility to the status we normally confer on a belief in ultimate truth? The answer, I think, requires a profound change in the role we accord. "Historically, beliefs have served to justify specific rules of conduct. Fallibility ought to foster a different attitude. But in the ultimate analysis, a belief in the open society is a matter of choice, not of logical necessity. A belief in our fallibility is a highly sophisticated concept, much more difficult to work with than more primitive beliefs such as my country or company or family, right or wrong."

We are the enemy. Our nerve makes them nervous. Now, practically, Soros does promote creating an open society alliance, kind of like a UN 2.0, but he describes it in pretty minimalistic terms. Anyway, the thinking here is relatively basic. Break down old certainties because they are believed to be false, but avoid the complete breakdown of society whose institutions and behaviors were actually based on those old certainties that you want to break down. People are supposed to be civilized without the traditional certainties that created civilization in the first place. How? Well, if you go down this route, you end up, I think, resorting to naked power because you have no real positive values to give people other than this faith, as he calls it, this choice to just believe in fallibility and in the open society as a consequence.