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ion is not something which the mind produces by processes of logic from its perception of reality, but rather a property of the categories with which it operates—not a product of the mind but rather what constitutes the mind. We never act, and could never act, in full consideration of all the facts of a particular situation, but always by singling out as relevant only some aspects of it; not by conscious choice or deliberate selection but by a mechanism over which we do not exercise deliberate control.55 PSR 38.indd Sec1:140 8/3/2009 2:23:09 PM 141 HAYEK ON REASON IN HUMAN AFFAIRS This mechanism, Hayek maintains, is the outcome of a process of evolutionary selection. The capacity to structure experience by means of abstract concepts and rules is an adaptation that allows man to orient himself in a world most of whose concrete particulars must remain forever unknown to him. It is an evolved solution to problems that stem from the fact that man’s mind is incapable of fully mastering or comprehending the infi nite complexity of concrete phenomena that comprise the human environment. As Hayek put it, abstract concepts are a “means to cope with the complexity of the concrete which our mind is not capable of fully mastering.”56 Moreover, reason and abstraction are inextricably entwined: “when we say what all men have in common is their reason we mean their common capacity for abstract thought.” Reason is only competent in the realm of the abstract. Reason and abstraction do permit us to achieve a degree of mastery over experience, a mastery that extends, however, only to certain general or abstract features of our environment and experience, which is why a complex society depends crucially upon the enforcement of only general or abstract moral and political rules. Abstract concepts extend the range of reason’s competence because they “help reason go further than it could if it tried to master all the particulars.” But our constitutional inability to foresee all the extended ramifi cations of our actions or to take into account all the concrete circumstances that determine their outcome necessarily restricts the degree of rational control we can exercise over the concrete manifestation of the social order. The use of abstraction extends the scope of phenomena that we can master intellectually. It does so by limiting the degree to that we can foresee the effects of our actions, and therefore also by limiting to certain general or abstract features the degree to which we can shape the world to our liking. Liberalism, for this reason, restricts deliberate control of the overall order of society to the enforcement of such general rules as are necessary for the formation of a spontaneous order, the details of which we cannot foresee.57 The nature of abstraction has been discussed at some length because, according to Hayek, the refusal to recognize that reason, by itself, is powerless to determine concrete particulars and thus to PSR 38.indd Sec1:141 8/3/2009 2:23:09 PM 142 THE POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEWER devise an appropriate concrete pattern of distribution for a complex society lies at the heart of constructivism. Hayek’s fundamental contention is that reason cannot, by itself, either consciously coordinate the concrete affairs of the inhabitants of an advanced society or determine particular concrete ends that persons should collectively pursue. “The Market” and the Demand for Rational Control In this regard, Hayek identifi es two methods whereby the actions of individuals and groups within a society may be coordinated: 1) the “automatic” and spontaneous coordination effected by the “market mechanism,”58 and 2) the conscious and deliberate arrangement effected by directing the particular actions of individuals and groups in accordance with a preconceived “plan,” the method of socialism and its variants. The “market” of course, is a metaphor for a complex of social relations, institutions, and practices. Hayek maintains that such phenomena are evolved solutions to the “central problem” any advanced society must solve: how to generate, utilize, and coordinate knowledge that only and always exists fragmented and dispersed among the numerous members of any complex society.59 Indeed, the “price system” should be conceived as an evolved “medium of communication” that serves both to bypass man’s ignorance of most of the facts that determine the success of his actions (the concrete circumstances prevailing throughout society) and to integrate the actions of individuals and groups into a coherent overall order.60 Hayek argues that the cultural achievements of Western civilization are not the product of superior knowledge per se but of the fact that Western society evolved a method of coordination “the market” that encourages the generation and utilization of more knowledge than any other method yet discovered. No mind or group of minds could consciously assimilate or coordinate the vast knowledge and information that daily enters the social process via the market mechanism. Indeed, much of the knowledge and information that enters the market process is of a kind that cannot be consciously communicated or articulated. Knowledge is a broad PSR 38.indd Sec1:142 8/3/2009 2:23:09 PM 143 HAYEK ON REASON IN HUMAN AFFAIRS term for Hayek. It consists not merely in explicit, systematized, theoretical knowledge but in the inarticulate knowledge embodied in techniques of thought, habits, dispositions, and customs, as well as in the fl eeting local knowledge of time and place whose utilization is so essential in a complex social order. The “automatic” coordination achieved via the spontaneous ordering process of the market is, in short, far superior to any method based upon conscious direction. Conscious direction (“planning”) must necessarily restrict the knowledge employed to that possessed by a few limited minds and thus prevent that fl exible adaptation to ever-changing concrete circumstances whereby the order as a whole maintains itself. For Hayek, the constructivist perspective he repudiates is characterized by an inability or unwillingness to recognize the “astonishing fact . . . that order generated without design can far outstrip plans men consciously contrive.”61 For two hundred years, the ideas inherited from the Age of Reason seized the imagination of political theorists and reformers of various persuasions, while the more sober and modest insights of the evolutionary theorists were largely ignored. To “organize . . . society as a whole,” rationally to construct a new and better world, to replace or correct the allegedly chaotic and irrational market process by the scientifi c or rational distribution of resources—at long last consciously to direct the course of human evolution— such have been the characteristic ambitions of social reformers throughout the modern era.62 According to Hayek, all forms of modern totalitarianism and collectivism—from the crudest communism to Fabianism to the “hot” socialism and Fascist corporatism of the ’20s and ’30s, through the recurring demands for “social justice” and contemporary calls for “controlled competition,” “bailouts,” and the like—derive their inspiration from the belief that reason and conscious direction can produce a more “rational” and thus superior allocation of resources than that achieved by the automatic and spontaneous forces of the market. Hayek argues, however, that the demand for rational, conscious (“political”) control of the concrete particulars of social life is based upon a misunderstanding of the process of cultural evolution and PSR 38.indd Sec1:143 8/3/2009 2:23:09 PM 144 THE POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEWER on a hubristic and dangerous overestimation of the capacity of the conscious reasoning intellect. As we have seen, Hayek contends that civilization is not the creation of the reasoning mind, but the unintended outcome of the spontaneous play of innumerable minds within a matrix of nonrational values, beliefs, and traditions. The desire of modern constructivists to “make everything subject to rational control” represents for Hayek an egregious “abuse of reason” based upon a failure to recognize the limits to reason’s sphere of competence.63 Such limits, again, stem from the fact that reason is confronted by an immovable epistemological barrier: its irremediable ignorance of most of the particular, concrete facts that determine the actions of individuals within society. The constructivist’s main error is the refusal to recognize that reason is only competent in the realm of the abstract. Hayek observes that the “rationalist . . . revolt against reason is . . . usually directed against the abstractness of thought [and] against the submission to abstract rules” and is marked by a passionate embrace of the concrete. He sums up the constructivist error in this way: “constructivist rationalism rejects the demand for the discipline of reason because it deceives itself that reason can directly master all particulars; and it is thereby led to a preference for the concrete over the abstract, the particular over the general, because its adherents do not realize how much they thereby limit the span of true control by reason.”64 Liberalism and the Limits to Reason Hayek contends that “all institutions of freedom are adaptations to the fundamental fact of ignorance.” Classical liberal principles and institutions should be conceived in this light, for liberalism’s reliance on guidance by abstract principles and the restrictions this places on the content of law and policy stem from the inherent limitations of the human mind we have discussed. Abstract liberal political principles and rules of justice (limited government, individual liberty, private property, contract, equality under the law, and so on) are, like abstract moral rules in general, adaptations to man’s permanent epistemological predicament—to the fact that the human mind cannot comprehend all the detailed PSR 38.indd Sec1:144 8/3/2009 2:23:09 PM 145 HAYEK ON REASON IN HUMAN AFFAIRS complexity of human society. For, according to Hayek, “the fact of our irremediable ignorance of most of the particular facts which determine the processes of society is . . . the reason why most social institutions have taken the form they actually have.”65 Liberal political principles, Hayek further argues, should be regarded as evolved “moral rules for collective action.”66 Such principles, like moral rules in general and like reason itself, serve an essentially negative function: to tell us what we must refrain from doing if we wish to prevent undesirable consequences (such as the destruction of the social order; perpetual confl ict or chaos; violence; the inability to adapt to changing circumstances or to make long-range plans; suppression of knowledge; stagnation; the subjugation of the individual; and so on). He also maintains that inherited moral rules, such as the attribution of free will and responsibility, are “devices” man has stumbled upon to make the limited rationality he does possess as effective as possible. We hold persons responsible because we hope to infl uence their behavior in the future, to encourage them to “act more rationally than they otherwise would.”67 Similarly, we allow persons to reap or bear the consequences of their actions so they will rationally attend to the particular circumstances over which they do have some control. Hayek maintains, in short, that many of the evolved social institutions and conventions of Western civilization are adaptations that both extend man’s limited rationality and foresight and buffer the more severe or dangerous consequences of their inadequacy. Although liberal principles and rules of law were not the products of conscious construction or enlightened invention, Hayek claims that reason (in the sense of rational insight) can comprehend the function such evolved phenomena perform in regard to the preservation of the liberal order. He believes that experience, observation, and rational argument—science, in short—can inform our conscious understanding and commend allegiance to liberal rules and institutions. Hayek does not argue that it is more rational (in an absolute sense) to observe abstract liberal principles in our collective conduct than collectively to pursue concrete objects via the planned society. It will only be rational to do so if we PSR 38.indd Sec1:145 8/3/2009 2:23:09 PM 146 THE POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEWER desire to preserve the liberal order. Only if we value that kind of order, in other words, will Hayek’s appeal to rational understanding fall on fertile ground. Reason, for Hayek, is always a servant of ultimately nonrational phenomena such as the values embodied in the free society as historically achieved in the West. Rational Deliberation, Law, and Policy Hayek’s position runs counter to a well-established tradition in political theory which, though not as explicitly constructivistic as socialism, nevertheless shares its belief in the constructive powers of reason. Those who believe politics to be an intrinsically ennobling and civilizing activity often argue that both the substantive content of liberal law and the common ends of political action should be determined by widespread participation in rational discussion and “reasoned debate.”68 Hayek insists, on the contrary, that no amount of rational dialogue can generate the knowledge requisite to the accomplishment of such tasks—and this for two reasons. First, Hayek contends that the rules that structure liberal society are not the product of rational argument and debate but are determined by the “rationale” and requirements of the liberal “system as a whole.”69 Although we may debate whether or not we desire to live in a liberal society, once we are committed to that kind of order, our choice of rules is severely circumscribed, for Hayek believes “there may exist just one way to satisfy certain requirements for forming an extended order,” such as modern liberal society.70 “The aim of jurisdiction,” Hayek tells us, “is the maintenance of an ongoing order of actions.” He thus reminds us that all law tacitly presupposes the existence of and refers to an ongoing factual order of activities, a comprehensive background order which, although it results from the regularities of the actions of individuals, is distinct from them. The order to which Hayekian theory refers manifests itself in the matching or coincidence of plans and expectations across persons who are necessarily ignorant of most of the concrete circumstances prevailing throughout society and of the concrete aims pursued by their (mostly unknown) fellows. The existence of such order is what accounts for the fact that the means we require to rePSR 38.indd Sec1:146 8/3/2009 2:23:09 PM 147 HAYEK ON REASON IN HUMAN AFFAIRS alize both our transitory ends and enduring values are made available by strangers (the “market”) who have no explicit knowledge of our concrete needs and wants. It is such an order the activities of millions of person who do not and cannot know one another’s concrete circumstances and intentions to “dovetail” or mesh rather than clash or confl ict, and this despite the fact that most persons are only tacitly aware of its existence and do not deliberately aim to produce it.71 Law in the sense of enforced rules of conduct is coeval with society, for the de facto observance of common rules is what constitutes even the most primitive social group. Prevailing rules will not necessarily be recognized or explicitly treated as rules but will manifest themselves as habitual perception or behavior, as customs and conventions. Again, those who practice certain inherited customs may not be aware that in so doing they contribute to the maintenance of the social order—they may merely “know” that certain actions are taboo or “just not done.” Yet those whose task it is to articulate the enforceable rules will be guided, more or less consciously, by an awareness that the rules “refer to certain presuppositions of an ongoing order which no one has made but which nevertheless is seen to exist.”72 The rules that structure modern liberal society, then, refer to certain presuppositions and requirements of that kind of social order, presuppositions and “inchoate rules” that are closely related to the “sense of justice.” Once again, an analogy drawn from language may assist understanding. As one’s “feeling for language” enables one to recognize the appropriateness or inappropriateness of the spoken or written word without explicit knowledge of the rule applicable to the case at hand, so one’s “sense of justice” enables one to recognize an inappropriate (or “unjust”) rule or action without necessarily being able to articulate the rule that has been violated. As the task of the grammarian is to articulate the general rule that governs a particular linguistic usage, so the task of the judge or jurist is to articulate the general rule that (implicitly or explicitly) governs the case at hand. The rules of both grammar and law are part of that abstract structure of rules “found” to be governing the operation of the mind.73 The task of the judge is thus PSR 38.indd Sec1:147 8/3/2009 2:23:09 PM 148 THE POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEWER not to invent or construct good law but to bring to conscious awareness the general principle or rule which, when once expressed, will be recognized as just (or at least not unjust)—which means, more or less, as being in conformity with the implicit rule that has customarily guided spontaneous interaction in a given society. The law that emerges from the law-fi nding efforts of judges or jurists (such as the English common law) always emerges, in other words, as a result of “effort[s] to secure and improve a system of rules which are already observed.” All valid law, including the law that structures the spontaneous order of liberal society, is, according to Hayek, of this nature. Hayek is concerned, then, to show that evolved social phenomena such as law and language exhibit certain similarities. First, law, like grammar, refers to a factual overall order (or abstract pattern)—an objective order which is the unintended result of human perception and behavior yet which is distinct from that behavior— of which actors and speakers are, in general, only tacitly aware. Second, the rules whose observance generated liberal society were as little the product of rational design, deliberate invention, or reasoned debate as were the rules of grammar. They emerged, instead, through the ongoing efforts of judges to articulate, develop, and interpret the implicit and explicit rules that structured a pre-existing order of actions. The development of law, in other words, always proceeds within a given framework of values, rules, and practices, the observance of which generates the overall social order. The task of the judge or jurist, although certainly an intellectual task, is not one that entails the exercise of deductive reasoning or syllogistic logic. In resolving disputes, the judge is, in effect, asked to clarify which one of several confl icting expectations is to be treated as legitimate. And that depends, in turn, on both customary practice and the requirements of the overall social order and not on his or anyone else’s preferences, rational or otherwise.74 Second, Hayekian theory places irremovable substantive limits to discretionary governmental policy within liberal society, limits that again derive from the epistemological issues explored above. More particularly, Hayek emphasizes that we do not possess and PSR 38.indd Sec1:148 8/3/2009 2:23:09 PM 149 HAYEK ON REASON IN HUMAN AFFAIRS cannot acquire knowledge of the innumerable and ever-changing facts and circumstances that we would need to know in order to determine concrete ends that all members of society “should” pursue. Regardless of how disinterested, just, intelligent, and altruistic we all may be, we can never rationally design a non-arbitrary hierarchy of concrete ends, for the ends that persons “should” pursue depend upon concrete facts and circumstances—relative values and scarcities—that no human mind or group of minds can grasp. A “rational” concrete pattern would be one based upon comprehensive utilization of all the knowledge of particular conditions dispersed throughout a society, knowledge which is simply unavailable as a whole to anyone. “Rational” concrete patterns can only be continually rediscovered as persons employ their (tacit and explicit) knowledge to adapt to the peculiar circumstances encountered within their local environments. Moreover, there exists no general principle by which we may objectively determine the relative importance of confl icting concrete ends.75 Hayek argues that no amount of rational discussion can produce agreement on the particular concrete manifestation a complex social order “should” assume if such agreement is not present at the outset of discussion. To compel persons to serve some hierarchical scale of concrete ends in the name of “rationality” can only mean that “common ends are imposed upon all that cannot be justifi ed by reason and cannot be more than the [arbitrary] decisions of particular wills.”76 Hayek further contends that all we truly have in common with our fellows in a Great Society is knowledge of certain abstract features of our social and physical environment. We share knowledge of the kind of clothing we wear, the kind of food we eat, the kind of entertainment we enjoy, and so on. Most of the particular facts and circumstances that determine the concrete shape of our fellows’ lives in the spatially extensive modern liberal order are and must forever remain unknown to us. Abstract rules prevailed precisely because they served to bypass these epistemological barriers and thus allowed the formation of an extended order that utilizes and coordinates more knowledge and information than is surveyable or accessible to any individual or group. To ignore these epistemologiPSR 38.indd Sec1:149 8/3/2009 2:23:09 PM 150 THE POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEWER cal considerations is, on Hayek’s view, to ignore or misunderstand the “whole rationale” of liberal institutions.77 Again, for Hayek, the institutions of the free society—law, markets, money, morals—are adaptations to the fundamental fact of ignorance, to the necessary limits of the human mind. If we somehow knew the “best” concrete manifestation a Good Society would assume, Hayek suggests, the case for liberal institutions would vanish.78 If indeed there existed omniscient entities who could direct each person’s activities toward his own and others’ best fulfi llment, we would not require the trialand-error process whereby we discover the pursuits that fulfi ll our values (and what, in fact, those values are). Fulfi llment—the good of all—cannot be planned in the abstract. Only those who have succumbed to the “synoptic delusion” could, Hayek argues, overlook this fundamental fact. “Immanent Criticism” and the Justifi cation of Values Although Hayek insists that inherited values and institutions may not be abandoned merely because we do not fully comprehend their purpose or signifi cance, he does not believe that tradition itself is sacrosanct or beyond criticism.79 He argues, in fact, that those who aim to understand both how a society functions and how it may be improved, have the right to criticize, examine, and judge all the values of that society. Again, his argument is not directed against what he considers the proper use of reason but against the abuse of reason—the endeavor to subject everything to rational control. If, however, as Hayek claims, inherited traditions embody knowledge which transcends that available to the conscious reasoning mind, how may one determine when critical evaluation of social institutions is in order and when it is merely an expression of rationalistic hubris? The only explicit guidelines Hayek offers are to be found in his doctrine of “immanent criticism,” which he defi nes as a sort of criticism that moves within a given system of rules and judges particular rules in terms of their consistency or compatibility with all other recognized rules in inducing the formation of a certain kind of order of actions.80 PSR 38.indd Sec1:150 8/3/2009 2:23:09 PM 151 HAYEK ON REASON IN HUMAN AFFAIRS Though we must constantly re-examine our rules and be prepared to question every single one of them, we can always do so only in terms of their consistency or compatibility with the rest of the system from the angle of their effectiveness in contributing to the formation of the same kind of overall order of actions which all the other rules serve.81 All we can do is confront one part [of civilization] with the other parts . . . [and] test each and every value about which doubts are raised by the standard of other values, which we can assume that our listeners or readers share with us.82 Hayek’s view, then, is that specifi c aspects of a culture must be judged or critically appraised only within the context of that culture and not from any transcendental perspective. For Hayek, there is no such perspective: “The picture of man as a being who, thanks to his reason, can rise above the values of civilization, in order to judge it from the outside . . . is an illusion.”83 For Hayek, morals, values, and reason are entirely natural phenomena, evolutionary adaptations which have enabled man to survive and fl ourish in his particular kind of world. Those social institutions that have survived the evolutionary process did so because they serve human needs and because they generate a superior overall order of activities. Values and moral rules, in other words, serve a function in regard to the generation and maintenance of a given social order and may not be manipulated or discarded merely because their rationale may not be transparent. Hayek suggests, moreover, that we still have much to learn regarding the relationship between values, morals, and legal rules, on the one hand, and, on the other, such ignorance reinforces our dependence upon tradition: “We do not really understand how [our moral system] maintains the order of actions on which the co-ordination of the activities of many millions depends . . . And since we owe the order of our society to a tradition of rules which we only imperfectly understand, all progress must be based on tradition.”84 Moreover, Hayek attaches great signifi cance to the fact that every person is born into a given value framework and a PSR 38.indd Sec1:151 8/3/2009 2:23:09 PM 152 THE POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEWER given working social order which no one created and which no one has the power or authority to alter at will. The fact that the present social order exists only because people honor certain values limits (both morally and pragmatically) the extent to which we can deliberately reform or change existing rules.85 Thus the necessity of “immanent criticism”—criticism of “particular rules within standards set by . . . the aggregate structure of well-established rules.”86 For Hayek, the rules of morality and justice are the same as they were for David Hume: conventions that have emerged and endured because they smooth the coordination of human affairs and are indispensable, given the nature of reality and the circumstances of human existence, to the effective functioning of society.87 For Hayek as for Hume the rules of morality and justice are not the products of reason and they cannot be rationally justifi ed in the way demanded by constructivist thinkers. And since our moral traditions cannot be rationally justifi ed in accordance with the demands of reason or the canons of science, we must be content with the more modest effort of “rational reconstruction,” a “natural-historical” investigation of how our institutions came into being, which can enable us to understand the needs they serve.88 Hayek claims that the values and rules whose observance generated Western liberal society can not be proved or conclusively demonstrated to be superior to all others. What he argues, however, is that the preservation of that kind of society is crucially dependent on a particular set of rules and values, however imperfect and in need of improvement, rules and values we abandon at our peril. Hayek’s plea for Western civilization is eloquent: what is at stake, he tells us, is the continuation of: the kind of open or ‘humanistic’ society where each individual counts as an individual and not only as a member of a particular group, and where therefore universal rules of conduct can exist which are equally applicable to all responsible beings. Moreover, it is only if we accept such a universal order as an aim, that is, if we want to continue on the path which since the ancient Stoics and Christianity has been characteristic of PSR 38.indd Sec1:152 8/3/2009 2:23:09 PM 153 HAYEK ON REASON IN HUMAN AFFAIRS Western civilization, that we can defend this moral system as superior to others—and at the same time endeavor to improve it further by continued immanent criticism.89