Hayek's The Constitution of Liberty - Institute of Economic Affairs

t h e u s e a n d l i m i t s o f k n o w l e d g e
3 THE USE AND LIMITS OF KNOWLEDGE
(CHAPTERS 2, 3, 4)
Hayek’s teaching on human knowledge provides the foundation
for his political philosophy. His key concepts are defined
substantially by reference to knowing. Liberty is having access
to the information needed to design and follow one’s plan of life.
Tradition is knowledge in the form of accumulated experience.
Progress is the advance of knowledge. For Hayek, determining
what we cannot know – the limits to human knowledge – is as
important as discovering what is knowable. Time and again he
calls attention to our fundamental ignorance and builds arguments
around our lack of knowledge. In fact, he insists that the
‘case for individual freedom rests chiefly on the recognition of
the inevitable ignorance of all of us concerning a great many of
the factors on which the achievement of our ends and welfare
depends’ (29).
Reflections on knowledge appear throughout Chapters 2,
3 and 4 of The Constitution of Liberty, interwoven with themes
that we considered in the previous chapter. The task now is to
reconstruct Hayek’s teaching on knowledge and explore its key
elements. Hayek had long argued that the individual possesses
only a small amount of the knowledge required for success in
daily life and thus must ‘make use of more knowledge than he has
himself acquired’ (22). In the first two sections of this chapter, I
consider the mechanisms that make available for our use the
knowledge possessed by others. Our using others’ knowledge
is possible because individuals participate in an order that they
did not create and whose ultimate workings they cannot understand.
Thus in the third section I examine Hayek’s discussion of
order – how it originates and works to our advantage. The fourth
section explores Hayek’s account of reason and shows how it rests
on his evolutionary conception of mind. The concluding sections
consider how knowledge is embodied in traditions, values and
moral rules.
Using inherited knowledge: rules and traditions
What specific mechanisms make it possible for us to use the
knowledge of others? Hayek makes a start on identifying these
mechanisms near the beginning of Chapter 2, where he distinguishes
between 1) ‘the transmission in time of our accumulated
stock of knowledge,’ and 2) ‘the communication among contemporaries
of information on which they base their action’ (27).
The difference, viewed from the actor’s standpoint, is this: past
know ledge becomes available for use largely by our conforming to
rules, while we make use of contemporaneous knowledge largely
by responding to signs.
In the West particularly, the advance of science is a
conspicu ous and vital way in which knowledge is transmitted
through time; but from the standpoint of man’s evolution, the
transmission of various tools, customs and institutions has been
much more important. All these examples involve a compliance
with rules. Hayek insists that rule-governed behaviour long
preceded the use of reason and language, so it need not be deliberate
or even something of which one is conscious. For a very long
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