Category Archives: Hayek

In Your Darkness, We Shall See the Darkness

Posted on by under activism, cancel culture, Hayek, libertarianism, moralism, Notes on the Anti-War Movement, Palestine, Trump 2

Columbia’s Capitulation
In Lumine Tuo Videbimus Lumen
–“In Your Light, We Shall See the Light,” Columbia University’s motto

Of all the pathetic abdications of moral responsibility and expressions of cowardice I managed to see during the quarter century I spent in academia, few approximate Columbia University’s abject surrender to the Trump Administration the other day. I won’t bother belaboring the details, which you can read almost anywhere. As former Columbia law professor Katherine Franke aptly put it, this is a case in which the victim of a ransom note has not just capitulated to the demands of the ransomers but given them what they hadn’t asked for, in return for less than nothing. But if you stand back from the welter of detail, there are a few lessons here worth learning, and worth articulating. Continue reading →

Hayek on Social Knowledge

Posted on by under Big Data, Hayek, political philosophy

We’re reading Hayek’s famous paper, “The Use of Knowledge in Society,” in our monthly reading group tomorrow. I’ve never been convinced by Hayek’s argument, and get less convinced every time I re-read the paper. I don’t have time to work out a full response to the paper, so here, for whatever it’s worth, is a quick laundry list of objections to be developed at some later date. Continue reading →

Sunstein versus Hayek on the Rule of Law

Posted on by under Hayek, MTSP Discussion: Fuller's Morality of Law

We’ve been doing some philosophy of law in the PoT reading group lately, and a recent piece came up by Cass Sunstein on “The Rule of Law.” The abstract claims that “this [Sunstein’s] account of the rule of law conflicts with those offered by (among many others) Friedrich Hayek and Morton Horwitz, who conflate the idea with other, quite different ideas and practices.” This statement caught my attention because Sunstein’s account of the rule of law seems very sensible. It is in fact quite similar to the account given by our current reading group book author Lon Fuller (that’s how Sunstein’s piece came up), which also seems sensible. At the same time, I am a strong admirer of Hayek. So, if the sensible Sunstein/Fuller account of the rule of law conflicts with Hayek’s, what’s the conflict? What “different ideas and practices” does Hayek “conflate” the rule of law with? Essentially none, it turns out. Sunstein’s, Fuller’s, and Hayek’s conceptions of the rule of law are largely the same. Sunstein misunderstands Hayek’s argument that the rule of law requires economic freedom. At least, so I will argue in what follows.

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