The Fatal Conceit #1

I have been reading The Fatal Conceit by Friedrich Hayek. Perhaps that should be by Hayek and the editor W. W. Bartley. According to Wikipedia, there is much debate about how much was written by Bartley rather than Hayek. Here is a far more extensive article about the matter.

However much of it was written by Hayek, it repeats themes in Hayek’s other, earlier works. The spontaneous order of markets and constructivist rationalism are key themes. The other key theme seems to be captured on page 70 as follows.

“How then do morals arise? What is our ‘rational reconstruction’? We have already sketched it in the foregoing chapters. Apart from the constructivist contention that an adequate morality can be constructed afresh by reason, there are at least two other possible sources of morality. There is, first as we saw, the innate morality, so-called, of our instincts (solidarity, altruism, group decisions, and such like), the practices flowing from which are not sufficient to sustain our present extended order and its population.

Second, there is the evolved morality (savings, several property, honesty, and so on) that created and sustains the extended order. As we have already seen, this morality stands between instinct and reason, a position that has been obscured by the false dichotomy of instinct versus reason.

The extended order depends on this morality in the sense that it came into being through the fact that groups following its underlying rules increased in number and in wealth relative to other groups. The paradox of our extended order, and of the market, [is that it was and is more successful] than would be possible by a personally directed process.”

The morality of markets is thus the “middle ground” between instinct and reason obscured by the false dichotomy of instinct versus reason. It seems to me that Hayek in the process created another, different false dichotomy – that reason has no role in the morality of markets.  I will have more to say about this in my next post.