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

h ay e k ’ s t h e c o n s t i t u t i o n o f l i b e r t y
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
time rules were no more than behavioural dispositions. Their
articulation in speech and in writing came very late in the process
of human evolution; and even now, our compliance with rules has
mostly a subconscious and habitual character.
Hayek frames the story of human evolution in terms of the
genesis, diffusion and transmission of rules. Elements of this
story appear in The Constitution of Liberty, but it is presented much
more clearly in later writings. In his most detailed account of the
matter, Hayek identifies three stages of evolution, each of which
involves rule-governed behaviour, but with great variation in both
the character of the rules and the behaviour itself. This account is
necessarily conjectural, since it looks back at least a million years,
long before the beginnings of recorded history.
Hayek speculates that primitive society consisted of small
bands of 15 to 40 persons, who lived by hunting and gathering.
Its rules were nothing more than instinctive dispositions to act
in ways that favoured group solidarity and survival. How did
general rules emerge? Hayek attaches great importance to the
mind’s facility of treating particulars as members of a class – what
he calls ‘abstraction.’ Verbal statements are a clear example, but
so are our behavioural responses. Abstraction ‘manifests itself
also in the way in which we respond similarly to any one of a
class of events which in most respects may be very different from
one another, and the feelings which are evoked by those events
and which guide our action, be it a sense of justice or of moral or
aesthetic approval or disapproval’ (40, 452, n. 4; cf. Hayek, 1952a:
142–6; and Hayek, 1978a: 35–49). This subconscious, responsive
form of abstraction developed as human beings moved through
different social structures; and the most efficient of these abstract
behavioural rules were spread through imitation (observers
acquired the rule by imitating particular actions that exemplified
it) and were enforced by social pressures. The verbal articulation
of learnt rules began about eight thousand years ago, and written
codes of morality and law are much more recent. Even after these
developments, subconscious abstraction would continue to exert
a dominant influence on human action (see 61–7, 148–9, 151–2;
Hayek, 1973: 17–21, 74–6; Hayek, 1979: 159–61).
Our present stock of knowledge consists in large degree of
rules that we have acquired through habit, custom and tradition.
Social evolution tends to be cumulative, so that traces of earlier
rules are brought forward into the present, where they exist in a
layered or stratified form.
Using contemporaneous knowledge: imitation, prices
and esteem
Transmission in time is one of the ways by which knowledge
becomes available for our use. The other way is through communication
among contemporaries, three examples of which are: a)
‘individuals imitating those who have been more successful;’ b)
individuals being guided by ‘prices offered for their products;’ and
c) individuals responding to ‘expressions of moral or aesthetic
esteem for their having observed standards of conduct’ (28–9).
All three processes are vital to civilisation. Imitation is essential
to society’s adaptive evolution, where ‘the decisive factor is not the
selection of the physical and inheritable properties of the individuals
but the selection by imitation of successful institutions and
habits’ (59). Prices convey vital information about the economic
behaviour of dispersed individuals. Signs of approval or disapproval
promote conformity to rules.
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