Chapter Four, Freedom, Reason, and Tradition; The Constitution of Liberty

ISBN 0-226-32084-7, University of Chicago Press | 1960 | Friedrich A. Hayek

[IronJack]

the outright abolition of occupational licensing, the FDA, and the post office

Heck, I only count myself a fraction libertarian, and I support this!

I have no doubt Hayek hid a libertarian streak. But from this post, I gather that it was a rational libertarianism rather than the extreme doctrinaire version that is so prevalent these days. In my opinion, Hayek seemed to think that the tradition of small government should be preserved, not that a philosophy needed to be created to argue for small government. That approach derives from the fact that both Hayek's and von Mises' models were primarily economic, not social or philosophical. There is little to recommend a dominant role for government in economic management, and Hayek's writings tend to reflect that.

[KC Burke]

Are you aware that Hayek, in one of his books, actually inlcuded an essay named "Why I Am Not a Conservative"?

Certainly I am aware of it, as it is an appendix to the book under discussion here. What I am also aware of is that it doen't promote the conclusion you have apparently made that he was saying he was a "libertarian", a term he found possibly useful as a substitute for US conservatism as opposed to continental conservatism but he claimed "for my part I find it (the term libertarian) singularly unattrative."

Go back and actually read the full book and this appendix and then get back to me if you still think that you have understood it correctly.

At the conclusion of that appendix, he settled on the use of "Old Whig".

The more I learn about the evolution of ideas, the more I have become aware that I am simply an unrepentant Old Whig -- with stress on the "old".

page 409 from the appendix you cite.

We all, of course, know that the term Old Whig come from Burke in distinguishing himself from the perversion of the New Whigs at the time of the French Revolution.

Remember, Hayek, at the time of this book, was largely writing for a British audience and felt that terms such as liberal, conservative and the like were hopelessly perverted by misuse and time. He is making the point that he is not Merely a conservator of the past and aligning himself with the classical liberal tradition of the original Whigs.

[independentmind]

Go back and actually read the full book and this appendix and then get back to me if you still think that you have understood it correctly.

Wise advice! I actually own the book, but it's been a while since I read it, or most of it, anyway. I actually don't remember too much about that essay--the title just stuck in my mind!

I like Hayek but sometimes I think his focus is too narrow.

[tpaine]

I have no doubt Hayek hid a libertarian streak. But from this post, I gather that it was a rational libertarianism rather than the extreme doctrinaire version that is so prevalent these days.
In my opinion, Hayek seemed to think that the tradition of small government should be preserved, not that a philosophy needed to be created to argue for small government. That approach derives from the fact that both Hayek's and von Mises' models were primarily economic, not social or philosophical. There is little to recommend a dominant role for government in economic management, and Hayek's writings tend to reflect that.
-Ironjack-


_____________________________________


KCB wrote:
I see libertarians who throw away the vagueries of Principles and want the cold logic of "one simple single formula" and while there are some in their rank I respect, and even enjoy, that system is not one I can admire.
It sets them on the Rationalist Totalitarian line that Hayek condemns so heartedly.

---

So it appears you both have a bone on with what you see as "extreme doctrinaire" and "Rationalist Totalitarian" libertarians..

-- Disregarding the fact that Hayek was indeed a commited libertarian, as established by this review:

Hayek: The Iron Cage of Liberty"
Address:http://lsb.scu.edu/~dklein/papers/gamble.html Changed:12:38 PM on Wednesday, September 20, 2000

[tpaine]

To clarify, - from the review:

"The Hayekian philosophy --- -- favors, almost always, policy reform in the direction of purer liberty.
Indeed, I suspect that Hayek acquired from Mises a primordial radicalism which only gradually found crisper expression. But Hayek's philosophy (and Mises's, for that matter) need not favor absolute purity of liberty. It may favor infringements on property, consent, and contract in such matters as weapons ownership, air pollution, easements for crossing land, eminent domain, immigration, many local government measures such as poor relief, and so on.

Hayek's philosophy and those of Milton Friedman, David Boaz, and Charles Murray are all very similar. Rothbard's "anarcho-capitalism," too, is largely congruent. All are now properly considered to be varieties of libertarianism."

[IronJack]

Extreme libertarianism dissolves the bonds of community and makes every man an island. Since Hayek was a conservative, and tradition supports a sense of community, I find it hard to believe that Hayek was an extremist libertarian.

That doesn't mean he didn't have some libertarian tendencies. And that's not a bad thing.

[KC Burke]

So it appears you both have a bone on with what you see as "extreme doctrinaire" and "Rationalist Totalitarian" libertarians..

What a quaint colloquialism.

Actually, if I have a bone to pick with any route, it is with the path of pure Ideology. And by that I mean the Ideology of "one, hidden, simple saving truth" that is the engine behind all pure radicals from Jacobins, to Marx and the Collectivists, and on to the pure Objectivists.

Since you went back and read #62, I hope you followed on and read my reply to missileboy at 75 again, as I don't count you in those ranks.

Thanks for pointing me toward the excellent review of Gamble's book on Hayek by Klein. And I do appreciate that you have summarized the thrust of that review in your followup post, but I think that some of my points are also reinforced as well.

Gamble says:

Hayek wisely rejected rationalist libertarianism. And he needed to distance himself from the slogan "laissez-faire." He genuinely rejected pure laissez-faire, but, more importantly, he needed to win confidence. His ambition and his situation led him to put forth a very nebulous conception of liberty.

The alternative anti-rationalist course is to employ the cogent, Rothbardian conception of liberty (which is congruent with laissez-faire), but reject the Rothbardian view that it is everywhere desirable. My assessment of modern libertarianism is that it is maturing into this policy-rooted, wiser anti-rationalist course.

Now, having been grounded in Burke and Kirk in my maturity, with little exposure to Rothbardian writing, I will have to take his word for the distinction due on "liberty", but I see Rothbard as being subsequent to, and hence dependent upon, Hayek, rather than the other way around.

It matters little to me the loose applications of the terms, a point I hope I have been faithful to in the past; it is the Principle that are actually found in the works of these fine minds that have gone before us. They are what I try to work through to find that correct path to support.

I don't feel that Hayek really had to "hid(e) a libertarian streak" as you quote IronJack as suggesting, even though Gamble wants to give him motives based on economic circle cultural struggles for acceptance. Libertarianism as understood by Hayek in 1960 is very similar to much of the plain rock solid conservatism of this forum today.

You quote IronJack as continuing in saying:
But from this post, I gather that it was a rational libertarianism rather than the extreme doctrinaire version that is so prevalent these days.

But I don't think that is the point I have tried to show from Hayek's chapter at all. Hayek rejects rationalism in subversion of political thought as I have pointed out by quoting him in full. Pure Ideological (in the sense of the extreme doctrainaire that is cited) Libertarianism is a sub-set of the rationality based upon one work of Mill and rejecting virtually all other political thought.

Instead, Hayek sees Old Whig principles in the 40s and 50s as being carried forward by the Burkeians (like Kirk) and by the libertarians of that day like Weaver and Meyer.

We can argue all day about the political niches that were held fifty years ago. My point is that if Hayek were alive and in his active years today, he would be on this forum and he would be (1) condemning rationalism and ideology; (2) holding forth for liberty and small government and (3) probably be occasionally given a time-out.

If, as I contend, much of the appendix to the Constitution of Liberty was written to a British audience, then whatever affinity for libertarian thought (in the sense of mid-century US conservatism, because that is how he defined it) he held was a good currative for the Conservative Party of the 1950s that held too much Tory sentiment. As I quote, Thatcher in rising to leadership, was plain that her sole guiding star was Hayek as he defined himslf politically in this work.

[tpaine]

Extreme libertarianism dissolves the bonds of community and makes every man an island.

Who here is writing of 'extreme libertarianism' [anarchy] in refering to Hayek?

Since Hayek was a conservative, and tradition supports a sense of community, I find it hard to believe that Hayek was an extremist libertarian.

Me too. Who said he was?
I consider him a constitutional libertarian, like most rationalists..

[KC Burke]

In 108 you are right in pointing out that we have little disagreement, but you conclude in a manner that confounds me:
I consider him a constitutional libertarian, like most rationalists..

Haven't we just got done with the full quotation of an entire work of major politcal overview showing that he abhored the false path of rationalism? It matters little to me if he liked the term conservative less than the other term he found wanting: libertarian. I am glad to find that he is in your list of respected antecedants as well as mine...but he damn well is condemning rationalism in political thought as a formula for determining government.

[tpaine]

We can argue all day about the political niches that were held fifty years ago.
My point is that if Hayek were alive and in his active years today, he would be on this forum and he would be (1) condemning rationalism and ideology; (2) holding forth for liberty and small government and (3) probably be occasionally given a time-out.
-KCB-

---

Thanks for finally making a point..
If Hayek would be arguing on this forum WHY would he be condemning what you call "rationalism and ideology"?


--- Indeed, - "Hayek wisely rejected rationalist libertarianism", --- because, as mentioned, -- "he needed to distance himself," - "he needed to win confidence." "His ambition and his situation led him to put forth a very nebulous conception of liberty."

"Hayek refrained from making specific judgments on public policy because he didn't want the radicalism of his notion of liberty to be too plain. In this respect, Hayek behaved like a politician, watering down his message with platitude and generality."



So agreed, -- I have no doubt he would be holding forth for liberty and small government and probably be occasionally given a time-out, as this is exactly what happens to most of the constitutional libertarian crowd at FR, when we run afoul of some of the more 'conservative radicals', who have a thing about libertarians.

[tpaine]

Rationality/ rationalism is not a 'false path'.
Hayek only 'rejected it' because of the politics of his day.


Were does Hayek in his own words, in context, condemn "rationalism in political thought as a formula for determining government"?

[KC Burke]

Were does Hayek in his own words, in context, condemn "rationalism in political thought as a formula for determining government"?

In vertialy every point he makes in this chapter, the subject article of this thread, he does just that.

In the last sentance of the first paragraph of subchapter 2:

It is the second view, as J. L. Talmon has shown in an important book from which this description is taken, that has become the origin of totalitarian democracy.

In the last sentence of the next paragraph:

In this respect, the British philosophers laid the foundations of a profound and essentially valid theory, while the rationalist school was simply and completely wrong.

In the next paragraph:

Those British philosophers have given us an interpretation of the growth of civilization that is still the indispensable foundation of the argument for liberty. They find the origin of institutions, not in contrivance or design, but in the survival of the successful. Their view is expressed in terms of “how nations stumble upon establishments which are indeed the result of human action but not the execution of human design.”

Dang, tpaine, I could go on and on. That is exactly the point he is making here.

I'll post the balance of the chapter in the next day or so and then you can read it from start to finish in its entirety. Perhaps his points about rationality will more clear to you then.

[KC Burke]

You quote Klien and not I in saying:"Hayek refrained from making specific judgments on public policy because he didn't want the radicalism of his notion of liberty to be too plain. In this respect, Hayek behaved like a politician, watering down his message with platitude and generality."

I don't agree at all if we are talking about his major work on government: The Constitution of Liberty. In it he talks about all sorts of specific government policy areas.

[tpaine]

Klien:
"Hayek refrained from making specific judgments on public policy because he didn't want the radicalism of his notion of liberty to be too plain. In this respect, Hayek behaved like a politician, watering down his message with platitude and generality."

I don't agree at all if we are talking about his major work on government: The Constitution of Liberty. In it he talks about all sorts of specific government policy areas.

Hayek's conclusion, from your post #85, wherein he is watering down his message, imo:

"The desire of the rationalist has always been for the deliberately constructed, synthetic system of morals, for the system in which, as Edmund Burke has described it, "the practice of all moral duties, and the foundations of society, rested upon their reasons made clear and demonstrative to every individual.
The rationalists of the eighteenth century, indeed, explicitly argued that, since they knew human nature, they "could easily find the morals which suited it."
They did not understand that what they called "human nature" is very largely the result of those moral conceptions which every individual learns with language and thinking."

-#85-

Perhaps french rationalists of the 18th century wanted a deliberately constructed, synthetic system of morals, -- but I fail to see a connection to constitutional liberty in modern america..
Hayek is blowing smoke, platitudes and generalities, to cater to his audience of semi-socialistic conservatives, who believe in a 'morally based' government, but claim to want freedom.. Tough choice.

[KC Burke]

I am suprised that you are taking the word of Klien, a reviewer of a biographer of Hayek, over the explicit words of the man himself in his difinitive work on government.

To me, what you are saying his he wrote it to hide his personal beliefs which were the opposite of what he desribed at length and is remembered for in political thought. I don't even think that this is the point of the reviewer, Klein.

Read the balance when it comes, I'm off to sack.

[IronJack]

Let me clarify ... I meant "rational" only in the sense of carefully considered and intellectually developed, not revering humanist reason above all else. Contrast it with the blind zeal of the Tory or the equally blind (but more destructive) anti-zeal of the Jacobins. I believe Kayek thoughtfully sifted the traditions and mores of his time and rejected those which had outgrown their usefulness, but retained those he found still valid. And he probably measured that value by its contribution to a stable society, not some far-flung utopian dream.

[Tares]

Certainly I am aware of it, as it is an appendix to the book under discussion here.

See post 6, you linked to a thread on Hayek's essay.

P.S. Thanks for the bump.

[browardchad]

Reading through this and other linked threads has been a pleasure. Thank you.

Though I have much to learn about conservative principles and the history of conservative thought, reading these threads made me wonder how this "spontaneous and irresistible development of certain obvious principles" can possibly take hold in a country such as Iraq, which has not had such "evolution" of free institutions and ideas.

It seems that George Will has recently written on this subject in a manner related to the material of this thread:

Can We Make Iraq Democratic?

[KC Burke]

A good G. Will article with some thoughts consistant with those of Hayek. Thanks.

I plan to post the balance of the Chapter to this thread later today. Check back.

[KC Burke]

Let me clarify ... I meant "rational" only in the sense of carefully considered and intellectually developed, not revering humanist reason above all else.

I understood that from the context, which is why I didn't take issue with you directly.

Hayek, in the last paragraph of the last of the three sub-chapters makes the same point on where rational thinking truly belongs. Watch for it later today.