BR TO KARL R. POPPER, 30 AUG. 1946
BRACERS 56966. ALS(X). Stanford U., Hoover Institution
Proofread by K. Blackwell

<letterhead>
THE HOTEL PORTMEIRION
PENRHYNDEUDRAETH NORTH WALES
August 30, 1946

Dear Dr. Popper

I have just finished re-reading your book, and think even better of it than at first reading. My only serious disagreements are: (1) I do not think there is adequate historical evidence for your favourable view of Socrates (or for its opposite); (2) I think Plato’s view of Justice is more complex than appears in your account, and more connected with traditional Greek ideas; (3) I take a more unfavourable view of Marx’s character than you do. Otherwise I agree closely — with your hostility to Plato and Hegel, with your view that history has no “meaning”, and with your positive opinions.

I have asked my publishers to send you an unbound copy of my History of Philosophy — published in U.S. a year ago, but still unpublished here. I have asked them also to send you my Freedom and Organization, 1814–1914, where there is a long examination of Marx.

I am writing to Simon and Schuster on your behalf, and I enclose an appreciation,1 of which you may make whatever use you choose. (I have already sent it to Simon and Schuster.)

Yours sincerely
Bertrand Russell

Address after Sep. 20, Trinity College, Cambridge.

• 1

  enclose an appreciation Of The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945). Extracts from the encomium were used on the dust-jacket of the book’s second impression (London: Routledge, 1947). Simon and Schuster did not publish it in the US; Princeton University Press did in 1950. The appreciation (B&R G14) is reprinted as 23 in Collected Papers 24.