An Investigation of the Legal Identity of the Open Society: The Methodological Challenges between Thinking in Breadth and Depth

This paper examines methodological approaches to the study of open society and its legal identity. Mostly, the concept of open society is based on the approach developed by K. R. Popper, who defined the likely development of an increasingly depersonalized society. Its expansion involves thinking on breadth. Because of breadth of thinking without the corresponding depth of thinking, Western civilization is in an existential crisis (P. Aleksandravičius). This is evidenced by the evolutionary forms of IT development. Hence Bergson’s concept of open society, based on the principle of fraternity, is again recalled. Civil society develops and operates on an intuitive basis, based on this principle. Therefore, the methodological challenges of studying the legal identity of an open society are linked to the choice between the two concepts. An analysis of the functionality of the common civilizational foundations of the legal identity of an open society was conducted. This functionality was demonstrated to weaken (1) the idea of common rules of conduct, (2) the rule of law, and (3) the idea of institutional and legal protection of human rights and freedoms. In researching the functionality of these ideas, it is more appropriate to refer to H. Bergson’s concept of open society than to K. R. Poper’s concept