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Alan O. Ebenstein -
Hayek
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His epistemology began from a phenomenalist base. The philosopher and physicist Ernst Mach was very important in Hayek's development and to the atmosphere at the University of Vienna when Hayek was a student there.
Alan O. Ebenstein
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One of the paradoxes of Hayek is that he wrote better than he thought. That is, his writing is often more suggestive and stimulating than the thought that underlaid it. While his writing is, stylistically, difficult, it is also exceptionally profound, and its value lies in its profundity.
Alan O. Ebenstein
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Hayek's trade cycle theory was not in essence the same as Mises's.
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Hayek's work in philosophy can be considered from another perspective than its methodology. When Hayek wrote that his philosophical studies should precede his political studies, he meant that in order to explain the sort of political system he favored, it was necessary to have greater understanding of the transmission and communication of information and knowledge. This is why he wished to travel to Italy and Greece. He thought that he might understand nonverbal knowledge better in doing so and might better understand the role of institutions in transmitting knowledge and information.
Alan O. Ebenstein
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Although Hayek would have protested being characterized as a democratic welfare statist in The Constitution of Liberty, this is what he was. While he favored less government rather than more, government at the local level rather than national level, the provision of social welfare through private charitable organizations rather than government at any level, and the private competitive provision of government services, there was much in his work that any modern, twentieth-century liberal could support.
Alan O. Ebenstein
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Hayek's ultimate social goal—his utopia—was the unification of all humankind in one society.
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The core ideas in Hayek's metaphysical and methodological thought were, in the former, that reality is complex; and in the latter, that there should be some empirical corroboration for statements about events in the realm of nature.
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Both Hayek and Locke thought that this is best achieved by limiting government's potential actions and restricting these potential actions to known general rules applicable to all. Both sought a government of rules rather than commands, the latter of which, by their nature, are not known in advance and may be arbitrary—not applicable to all. Hayek's goal was the society of law.
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Hayek, highly influenced by Mach as a young man, began reading him immediately following his return from service in World War I. He remarked about four decades later that he was stimulated by Mach's work to study psychology and the physiology of the senses, though his interest in these areas derived as much from disagreement as agreement with Mach's work.
Alan O. Ebenstein
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Hayek agreed that Keynes saw himself as a preserver of capitalism rather than a destroyer.
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Freud's emphasis on the unconscious is not entirely unrelated to Hayek's conception of spontaneous order and the idea of tacit, nonverbal knowledge distinct from verbal, explicit knowledge (or verbal statement). For the concepts of both the unconscious and spontaneous order, ideas of unarticulated knowledge and interpersonal knowledge and its communication are critical. There was more philosophical similarity between some of Hayek's and Freud's ideas than Hayek realized.
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Hayek was a philosophical utilitarian in his ultimate moral outlook.
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While it is possible to imagine Mises without Hayek, it is not possible to imagine Hayek without Mises.
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Before the middle 1930s, Hayek followed Mises in adopting an a priori conception of the theory of economic activity, although Hayek said he was never an a priorist philosophically. Following Mises, however, he thought at this time that economic theory is strictly deductive from premises. Economic theory consists of laws derived from the pure logic of choice of economic actors. Economics is not an empirical science, Hayek then thought.
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Hayek's emphasis on the signaling function of interest rates to guide economic production to longer or shorter periods of production informed and was the starting point for many of his contributions in spontaneous order and of the crucial role of prices to guide optimal economic activity.
Alan O. Ebenstein
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Hayek possessed a towering intellect. At the same time, his intelligence was as much brittle as it was powerful.
Alan O. Ebenstein
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Hayek opposed not merely Keynes's policy recommendations, but his technical method.
Alan O. Ebenstein
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Hayek expressed more fully and deeply than Mises the epistemological argument for free market order. The crucial issue for Hayek became not that without prices individuals cannot calculate (though he thought this to be the case), but that the division of knowledge renders centralized control of an economy or society impossible.
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The German-speaking countries have, of course, a different history from the English-speaking world, and this background greatly influenced Hayek's thought.
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Hayek expressed the greatest praise for Popper. Whether this was Hayek's ultimate view or a reflection of a deep, though subordinate, strain of personal modesty and humility that ran through him is an open question. Hayek's support was vital in Popper's career. During the late 1970s and early 1980s, Hayek was involved with an unsuccessful effort to obtain the Nobel Prize in Literature for Popper.
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The German idealist philosophical tradition from which Hayek emerged is usually held to begin with Gottfried Leibniz.
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Hayek's view was that all the knowledge that is possible of a circumstance is a theory of the circumstance—that is, there is no such thing as pure sensation. There is, rather, a theory of sensation.
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Stemming from the Germanic philosophical heritage, Hayek was likely to place more emphasis on the act of knowing than on objects themselves. Hayek ultimately followed Kant in his ontological conception of reality—he thought that mind impresses order on existence.
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Hayek abhorred Hegel, considering his work virtually without value. At the same time, Hegel's emphasis on mind and idealism indicate the philosophical heritage from which Hayek sprang.
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Keynes ultimately placed his hopes for good government in exceptional men. The focus in Hayek's work was rules.
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Quote of the day
Communism is inequality, but not as property is. Property is exploitation of the weak by the strong. Communism is exploitation of the strong by the weak.
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
Alan O. Ebenstein
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