Hayek, Friedrich August von - John Gray (essay date 1997)
John Gray (essay date 1997)
SOURCE: “The Twentieth Century: The Limits of Liberal Political Philosophy,” in An Uncertain Legacy: Essays on the Pursuit of Liberty, edited by Edward B. McLean, The Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 1997, pp. 193-224.
[In the following essay, Gray criticizes Hayek for constructing a philosophical system that is too dependent on the logic of economic exchange in explaining all kinds of human interaction.]
In Friederich August von Hayek's work we find one of the most ambitious attempts we possess thus far to develop a comprehensive liberal political philosophy. Unlike the fashionable liberalisms which take their cues from Rawls, Hayek's is noteworthy in making plain its dependency on a particular philosophy of history and on the results of economic theory. In a way that is only comparable with the liberalism of J. S. Mill, Hayek's liberalism expresses an entire, if not always an entirely coherent world...
[The entire page is 11141 words long]
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