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
term, declaring it to be a dangerous and misleading expression that
ought to be avoided. The rationalist/anti-rationalist distinction is
replaced by one between two kinds of rationalism, which Hayek
calls ‘constructivist’ and ‘critical.’ His own position, and that of the
evolutionary tradition from which he draws, is renamed ‘critical
rationalism’ – a term borrowed from Karl Popper (1967: 94).
In order to bring out reason’s limits, Hayek offers a critique
of reason. This critique moves at two levels, one of which is much
more radical than the other. At the less radical level, Hayek insists
on the pervasiveness of human ignorance and shows that reason
can neither supply the knowledge required for daily life nor
explain the processes that make such knowledge available for our
use. At a second and more damaging level, he depreciates reason
itself, first by subordinating reason to the subconscious mind and
then by submerging mind into the process of civilisation.
Hayek knew that rationalism, both ancient and modern,
had taken its bearings by a natural order whose principles are
constant and intelligible to the human mind. In one way or
another, it had taught that reason can transcend the here and
now, the opinions of the time, to apprehend the unchanging
truth of things, including the good and beautiful. Ancient and
medieval rationalists in particular had taught that essential qualities
of the world itself are captured by the concepts employed in
reasoning. Know ledge of nature, especially human nature, would
provide a timeless standard by reference to which human affairs
could be ordered. Hayek regards these rationalist views as both
wrong theoretically and dangerous from a practical standpoint.
He wants to foreclose any appeal to nature that might call tradition
into question, or undercut the existing order, or fuel reckless
change by stimulating a taste for ‘perfectionism.’
Hayek aims to discredit rationalist theories of this sort
through his evolutionary account of mind. By his account, the
human mind evolved slowly for a million years or more before
reason finally emerged. Even now, our actions depend much more
on habit and unthinking responses to signs than on the kind of
knowledge that an individual mind ‘consciously manipulates’
(24). Man’s mind is thus ‘a product of the civilization in which
he has grown up and … he is unaware of much of the experience
which has shaped it – experience that assists it by being embodied
in the habits, conventions, language, and moral beliefs which are
part of its makeup’ (24). What mind has and will become depend
on the process of civilisation. Civilisation preserves and transmits
general rules and beliefs, and the individual mind is a collection
of them. This is not to say that the mind is merely passive. Besides
classifying sense data, it has ‘the capacity to restrain instincts.’
Without such restraints, civilisation could never develop (1988:
22; cf. 1979: 160).
Hayek was greatly influenced by the historicisation of the
mind that occurred in German thought in the late nineteenth
century – a development that would, over the next century,
transform the way scholars understood human knowing and
reasoning. This was a time when historians and anthropologists
were able to argue, from abundant data, that beliefs and worldviews
vary greatly from one society or civilisation to another. Such
data alone was insufficient, however, to support the claim that the
mind itself changes. For this a theory of knowledge was required.
This new theory began from Kant’s principle that ultimate
being is unknowable to reason, because we perceive it only as
filtered through the mind’s categories. Nature, as known to us,
is already a product of a mental transformation and not a true
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