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Name:
F.A. Hayek
Friedrich August von Hayek
Dates:
Born: May 8, 1990 in Vienna, Austria
Died: March 23, 1992 in Freiburg, Germany
Specialization:
Economics
Political Philosophy
Major Works:
The Road to Serfdom (1944)
Individualism and the Economic Order (1947)
The Sensory Order (1952)
The Constitution of Liberty (1960)
Law, Legislation, and Liberty (3 volumes, 1973, 1976 & 1979)
Economic Freedom (1991)
Biography:
F.A. Hayek's work was primarily concerned with the state and nature of human freedom in
society. Like Isaiah Berlin, Hayek adopted the negative conception of liberty in which being
free means only being free from external constraints. Hayek rejected the
principles of economic planning in part because of this and in part because he believed that
the very idea of designing human institutions to meet human needs was nonsense. According
to Hayek, human needs are met when human institutions develop spontaneously through
efforts which do not necessarily have any particular end in mind.
As a consequence of this, Hayek argued vociferously against socialism or any economic planning which looked at all like socialism. For example, Hayek wrote that attempts to redistribute wealth in order to recitify material inequalities were immoral because they violate the principle of the rule of law (which requires treating everyone impartially, regardless of their wealth) and because it represents a type of external restraint which improperly denies people their liberties. Such redistribution also undermines the economic efficiency of the system - this is a problem because that efficiency is what allows the spontaneous economic and social order to develop and to meet people's needs freely, without restraint and control.
Although Hayek became very popular in the 1980s because his economic and political philosophy were influential with Western leaders like Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, there are still quite a few questions and problems which have not been fully answered. For example, how can Hayek effectively argue for his type of system when, as one of his premises, he allows such a limited role for reason in the development of human institutions? If a government were to set out to deliberately construct such a system, that would undermine Hayek's argument that governments shouldn't set out to construct economic systems and to try and plan what will happen.
Also Known As: none
Alternate Spellings: none
Common Misspellings: none
Related Resources:
What are Political and Legal Philosophy
The Philosophy of Politics and the Philosophy of Law are often studied separately, but they are presented here jointly because they both come back to the same thing: the study of force. Politics is the study of political force in the general community, while jurisprudence is the study of how laws can and should be used to achieve political and social goals.What is Philosophy?
What is philosophy? Is there any point in studying philosophy, or is it a useless subject? What are the different branches of philosophy - what's the difference between aestheitcs and ethics? What's the difference between metaphysics and epistemology?
