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In this book some of the world's leading Hayek scholars examine the link in his thought between the purely analytical and a broader vision that could be characterized as political economy. ... Read more

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In this incisive work, Calvin M. Hoy focuses exclusively on Hayek's philosophy of individual freedom. Beginning with an analysis of Hayek's definition of freedom, the author examines his proposed methods for preserving personal liberty through economic, legal, and governmental measures, and provides a trenchant critique of Hayek's arguments. Ultimately, Hoy demonstrates that a minimal socialist state is compatible with Hayek's principles, and that Hayek has not successfully stated a comprehensive philosophy of freedom because he focuses on the type and ignores the amount of coercion permissible in a free society. ... Read more

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Hayek's Political Economy draws many of Hayek's insights together by locating them within newly emerging methodological perspective of critical realism and by scrutinizing the phenomena of knowledge and ignorance. Steve Fleetwood argues that understanding how agents communicate knowledge and cope with ignorance leads directly to a focus upon social rules which is essential in addressing the question of order, and he illustrates how it is possible to abandon the notion of equilibrium without falling into analytical anarchy. ... Read more

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A critique of the work of New Right thinker Friedrich Hayek, whose writings set out an intellectual foundation for an economy based on private property, free markets and minimal government. Tomlinson focuses on Hayek's economic theories and assesses their relevance to "market socialism". ... Read more

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Revered by some as the most important twentieth century theorist of free society, Friedrich A. Hayek has been reviled by others as a mere reactionary. Impartial throughout, the author offers a clear exposition and balanced assessment that judges Hayek's theory by its own lights. The author argues that the key to understanding Hayek lies in an appreciation of the proper link between descriptive social science and normative political theory. He probes the idea of a spontaneous order and other notions central to Hayek's thought, and concludes that they are unable to provide the "scientific" foundation Hayek seeks for his liberalism. By drawing out the distinctive character of Hayek's thought, the author presents a new and more accurate picture of this important social and political theorist. ... Read more

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Provides a philosophical and critical analysis of F.A. Hayek's version of Classical Liberalism. Highlighting weaknesses of the agnostic, evolutionary ethics that Hayek, a recipient of the Nobel Prize in Economics, considers foundational to his free-market system, the study explores alternative moral foundations within Christian ethics. ... Read more

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Clearly exposes weaknesses in Hayek's logical structure
Graham Walker surveys Hayek's important arguments supporting a free market order.Walker seems to agree with Hayek as far as the market order goes.But Walker catches Hayek making the same kind of mistake which Hayek so successfully exposes in socialist thought.

Hayek argues that no one can be as wise as the socialists who think they can discard the market order.But Hayek presupposes that he himself is wise enough to dismiss the Judeo-Christian ethical order.Hayek gives no more care to his dismissal of the ethical order than socialists give to their dismissal of the market order.

Although Walker expresses theism, a reader who does not share his theism will not be put off by it.Exposure of Hayek's presuppositions relies upon reason and not upon faith.Walker postpones telling his own views until the Conclusion and Postscript.There Walker tells of his faith briefly, without pushing it.

This book is well written and clearly argued. ... Read more

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The aim of the book is to stimulate the realignment of political, theoretical and philosophical thinking that is now beginning in response to global warming. The author provides an examination of the theories of the most prominent social philosophers of the 19^th and 20^th centuries – Karl Marx and Friedrich Hayek. He does so in the belief that the work of these two thinkers, in their commonalities and differences, successes and failures, contain important indicators of the content of a social philosophy suited to today’s conditions.

The book proceeds in the context of the failure of the attempts by followers of Marx, having achieved political power, to realise the objectives they took to issue from his theories, on the one hand, and of the earlier successes, but now emerging failures of the neo-liberal philosophy of Hayek to cope with the with the environmental outcomes of those very successes, on the other. In doing so, the book will incidentally critique postmodernism, because of its claim to be ‘Theory’ as such, which for a generation impeded genuine theoretical and philosophical work.

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This book considers the relationship between Hayek and Mill, taking issues with Hayek’s criticism of Mill and providing a broader perspective of the liberal tradition. Featuring contributions from the likes of Ross Emmett, Leon Montes and Robert Garnett, these chapters ask whether Hayek had an accurate reading of the ideas of Mill and Smith, as well as considering themes such as sympathy and analytical egalitarianism that play a large part in the liberal tradition, but less in work of Hayek These chapters argue that addition of these key ideas to the Hayekian corpus leads to a far broader understanding of the liberal tradition than that provided by Hayek

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In celebration of the one hundredth anniversary of Friedrich von Hayek's birth, this is a series of lectures featuring outstanding scholars of Hayek's work. Speakers include Gary Becker, James Buchanan, Richard Epstein, Ralph Harris, Kurt Leube, Kenneth Minogue, Michael Novak, and Sherwin Rosen. Filmed at the University of Chicago and hosted by Robert Pippin, Chairman of the Committee on Social Thought. ... Read more

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Legacy of Friedrich Von Hayek
This series passes on a meaningful impression and lasting knowledge of Hayekian Scholarship, history and contemporary application by the best classical libertarian scholars the world has to offer. A serious student of Political Economy must have this knowledge and those well schooled will enjoy the depth and breath.That it is offered in both audio and video format allows for a course easy to be followed and easily revisited. In preparation for oral presentations, desertaions and exams this series is the best source to emulate and stay true to the classical style. There are all gains from this trade.
Following is a list of lectures and the Authors:
Vol. 1 Austrian And Neoclassic Economics by Sherwin Rosen
Vol. 2 Hayekian Socialism by Richard Epstein
Vol. 3 Hayek, Practitioner of Social Justice by Michael Novak
Vol. 4 Hayek, Radical Reactionary by Lord Ralph Harris
Vol. 5 Hayek's Legacy by Kurt Leube
Vol. 6 Hayek and the Fate of Liberty in the Twentieth Century by Kenneth Minogue
Vol. 7 Morality adn Community in the Extended Market Order by James Buchanan ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (7)

Methodology clarified
It was Hayekian thought that finally explained the world to me. I have read a good deal of Hayek. Years ago I started with The Road to Serfdom, than The Constitution of Liberty, The Fatal Conceit, and a slew of essays by Hayek and others on Hayek.So, as the above illustrates, I found this book because I wanted a deeper understanding of Hayek's intellectual thought. I did, in fact, receive this, but I gained something much more powerful from this book.
I'm an undergraduate student of Political Science, so, accordingly, I have taken one class on methodology--this, of course, was the application of Multi-Regressional Analysis in Political Science. The insight that this book offers, more than an understanding of Hayek, Mises, Menger or even Weber, is the insight that there is more than one valid way to approach research in the social sciences.That is the gist of this book--that Hayek, and the Austrian school approached the study of and the manner in which to explain the world differently than the garden-variety intellectual, and that these different approaches hold merit; they are worth understanding--regardless of their absence from curriculums.
I would like to thank Dr. Caldwell for this book; it has truly opened my eyes, and has given credence to my lure to the Austrians and Hayek. Make sure you don't skip the last chapter; it is worth the time and attention.

An Excellent Book About Hayek's Life & Work
I heard about this book on "Free Markets With Dr. Mike Beitler," a libertarian internet-radio show. Caldwell does an excellent job helping the reader understand the context in which Hayek was writing. When Hayek deviates from free-market thinking, Caldwell helps you to understand why. I recommend this book in addition to Beitler's "Rational Individualism." Rational Individualism: A Moral Argument for Limited Government & Capitalism

Wide Ranging, Lively and Clear
This is one of the best non-fiction books I have read in a long time.I have no idea how I came to buy this - I rarely read biographies, consider myself left-wing, am a computer programmer who was educated as a physicist (so have no background in economics), and only vaguely recognise his name - so must assume someone recommended it to me.Whoever that person was: Thank-you!

I think there are two things that makes this such a good read.Most important is the subject matter - Hayek seems to have been a pretty smart chap who was interested by, and contributed to, a wide range of subjects, at a time (the latter 2/3s of the twentieth century) when a lot was happening.And because he kept shifting fields and, to some extent, revising his opinions, you get to watch the evolution of a wide range of disciplines.

So this book touches on subjects like scientific methodology; emergent behaviours; how money acts as a way to signal information; the foundations of economics (do you have to assume everyone is "perfectly greedy", for example?); models of consciousness; evolutionary biology and group selection - interesting problems that are relevant today, presented in a historical context that is extremely helpful in understanding their peculiarities.Maybe it sounds crazy (or stupid), but until I read this book I had no idea how history could be so useful, relevant and informative.

Much credit must also go (my "second reason") to the author - I think this is impressively well written.Caldwell is a very careful guide who takes pains not only to justify what he says, but also gently directs you through what could be a terribly confusing and complex journey by identifying common threads, summarizing discussions, and repeatedly placing everything within its proper context.Please write another book (how about Popper?)!

Are we having fun yet?
I do not know who the target audience was here, but it certainly was not me, and I am a big Hayek fan. This book is way over my head. Perhaps a doctorate in economics or philosophy would make this work easier to read, but I don't think the average intelligent, interested reader will want to struggle though this material. It never comes up for air.

An other opinion heard from
First off, I want to echo the other reviewers in my praise for the book.The background in economic history was valuable to me and helps put the work that Hayek did into perspective.Though it may be "academic" (any look at the philosophy behind economics is probably not for the same audience as more instrumental books -- like "How to be successful" or whatever).That being said the book is well written and if anyone is interested in the influence of positivism on economics, the division of psychology and economics into separate disciplines, the roots of socialism and other foundational material, this book presents that information in a logical, clear way.

It cautions at the beginning that Hayek's work was complex and interdependent.There is a tendancy to take a paragraph by Hayek from one place and use it as a representation of the whole, like the blind men and the elephant.I would suggest strongly that to call him foundational in the current US conversativism is probably wrong.One clue is that as an extra to the "Constitution of Liberty" there is an essay by Hayek called "Why I am not a conservative."

Hayek was fascinated with "knowledge" in the sense that somehow humans manage to coordiante activity and believe that we share knowledge, but in reality it is not possible.Each of sees what we see and we do not see what others see.Somehow, unconsciously, we have evolved a way of being able to use the knowledge of others as well as our own.

His argument against socialism was basically that it breaks some of the ways of knowing what others are doing.A standard definition of Economics is that it is about how people make decisions in conditions of scarcity.In other words, there is an assumption that there is never enough to go around.If you think about it, even people with virtually unlimited amounts of money still compete with each other for status and other such things.We are all often in a position that if we choose X, then we cannot have Y.

Hayek thinks that that decision should be left up to the individual.He says that the mistake that people who believe that scientific central planning make is that they believe there is more of a consensus that there is.Someone's choices wind up overriding other's choices.There is more to it than this, but this is the basis of the argument.It is simple and not really one that falls easily on a liberal/conservative spectrum.

It is, however, probably the source of the claim that he is "conservative."Maggie Thatcher was a fan of Hayek as was, apparently, Ronald Reagan. It can be construed that the opposite of governments actively trying manage economies is lazie fare, hands off, anything goes conservativism.But that would be a misreading of Hayek and simply because a conservative likes Hayek's arguments about one topic does not make Hayek a conservative.

There is another point where Hayek would probably diverge widely from current "conservatives."By popular demand the borders in the US are getting tighter.For instance, it is now difficult to come back and forth from Canada, foreign graduate students are looking elsewhere, the "conservative" governor of California (himself an Austrian and alledgedly a fan of Hayek) is supporting vigilanties to prevent border crossings from Mexico.It does not seem that this is condusive to "knowledge" in the sense that Hayek uses it, as something that is distributed throughout humanity.

Hayek's greatest interest was in how we each take our little snapshot of the world and interact with others to build stable social structures without any direction. It is not that someone decides that we should have a structure like such and such, we find that these structures are there and we can all recognize them. In a way, he is talking about the "invisible hand" of Adam Smith.Somehow we coordinate activity so that I can be writing this right now on a computer I got somewhere, a DSL connection and so on and I have not talked to the people involved with making it happen, they have not talked to each other and no one directed them to do it.

Hayek is interested in the rules that make that happen.Now we talk of complex adaptive systems and the idea of "spontaneous order" is widely studied to day. Current work on "connectionist networks" now mention Hayek.He was way ahead of his time.

I also want to point out that even though some call him "the father of libertarianism" he was not against governments making rules that cause markets to function better, for instance, regulation against monopoly.Libertarians were up in arms against the threatened breakup of Microsoft, something Hayek would not have been against in principle.

I hope more people will read this book.It is remarkable how many ideas we think are brand new have been around for a while.This book helped me understand how they got sidelined.It is really a lively book, filled with people as well as ideas, which is important, because sometimes politics trumps insight.Hayek's remarkable ideas are just beginning to be widely noticed and recognizing what is happening is an exciting benefit of this book.


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A Theory of Mind
The Sensory Order is an impressive book. While I cannot comment on how it stands up to other works in psychology, the fact that Hayek was able to write a book of such sophistication outside of his own field of expertise shows the breadth of his thinking. Hayek aims at explaining the process by which minds classify perceptions not accounted for by physical laws. This theory is developed in seven chapters. Chapter eight lays out the philosophic implications of Hayek's theory. As an economist, this last chapter is the most important. It would be interesting to find out if psychologists find the other seven compelling.

Hayek's contribution to psychology (not merely a Nobel laureate in economics)
The archives at the Hoover Institution in Stanford house the original manuscript in German that Hayek wrote when he was torn between pursuing psychology or economics. Decades later, that manuscript was published as The Sensory Order. Although this is the less known piece by Hayek among economists, it is considered by many pioneers in cognitive science (such as Gerald Edelman, see Neural Darwinism) as foundational in the development of this interdisciplinary study and the examinations into artificial intelligence. The principal thesis of Hayek's piece is that perception cannot be accounted for by means of physical laws, since the effect of sensory stimulus is the first aspect of the complex order of perception. Next, the mind maps the order of the external stimulus. This perceptual experience, however, is not identical to any other from a similar external stimulus since each has its own character in relation to the associations that the mind assigns to any particular sensory experience. Our perception of external objects are, Hayek writes, "never of all the properties which a particular can be said to possess objectively, not even only some of the properties which these objects in fact possess physically, but always on certain aspects, relations to other kinds of objects which we assign to all elements of the classes in which we place the perceived objects." This observation thus anticipates the monist framework presented by Maurice Merleau-Ponty in his Phenomenology of Perception. This fascinating book is a must read for anyone interested in the mind.

Neglected masterpiece
Although Hayek's influence on economics and political science has been profound, his work in psychology, of which this book is the sole product, is still relatively unknown.This is unfortunate, not only because Hayek is a great psychologist, in the same league as Helmholtz, Fechner, and Freud, but also because his more influential work is often based on the conceptual framework established in The Sensory Order.I can think of several reasons for the neglect of this book.First, it is not easy to read.Despite a lucid style, the ideas contained are so complex and expressed in so compressed a form that several readings are required to fully appreciate them.Second, the ideas are so revolutionary that we still fail to grasp their implications, though even Hayek himself, it should be said, failed to address them adequately. Hebb's Organization of Behavior, the first explicit proposal of Hebbian learning and cell assemblies, and Gallistel's Organization of Action, a compilation of classic works on motor coordination, contained similar ideas, but they are nowhere as original and profound as this book. ... Read more