Speaker
Description
With time, Hayek viewed Smith ever more positively. Accordingly, Smith plays a huge role in The Fatal Conceit, Hayek's last book. But given the doubts around The Fatal Conceit, can we rely on this material? My paper offers Hayek's interpretation of Smith based on reliably Hayek's material that he wrote as by-products of The Fatal Conceit book project. He wrote several dozen articles along the way and uses Smith particularly in "Überschätzte Vernunft/The Overrated Reason" (1982/2013), "The Origins and Effects of our Morals: a Problem for Science" (1984), "The Rules of Morality are not the Conclusions of our Reason" (1984), "The Moral Imperative of the Market" (1985), "Die Freie Marktwirtschaft und ihre Moralische Grundlagen" (1985), "The Austrian School" (1985). In these articles, Hayek uses Smith to demonstrate that The Fatal Conceit should have been a book on Ethics, and in this, how ignorant we are towards the emergence of moral order. Somewhat anachronistically, Hayek grants Smith with a theory of spontaneous generation of morals, spontaneous being in the absence of rational construction. Morals come about as a product of religious evolution, says Hayek, referring to Smith. The late Hayek considers Smith a precursor to various evolutionary complex phenomena, not only of morals, but also of system science, autopoiesis, cybernetics, and, last but not least, economics. Even if Hayek stemmed from the marginal-utility-based Austrian school, which criticized Smithian classical political economy and its value theory, he credits Smith with the theory of spontaneous order of economy based on the division of knowledge among individuals. Paradoxically, he closes his 1985 article Austrian School with a laudation of Smith and his invisible hand, criticizing some aspects of the Austrian school with the help of Smith.
| Organization | Erasmus University Rotterdam |
|---|
