Hayek, F. A. von (1899--1992)

Last update: 12 Feb 2026 11:39
First version: 15 March 2014

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Yet Another Inadequate Placeholder.

It is important, when reading Hayek, to always bear in mind the distinction between Hayek-the-profound-social-scientist, and his evil twin, Hayek-the-right-wing-ideologue. The two are present, in my experience, within every book, sometimes both appearing within a single paragraph. (*) For a serious effort at dis-entangling, I recommend the essay by Bowles, Kirman and Sethi.

*: I know that this joke isn't original, but I can't remember where I lifted it from! Probably either Haworth's book or Tomlinson's.

See also:
• Collective Cognition
• Duality between Knowledge Centralization and Market Completeness?
• Economics
• Economists in Politics
• Evolutionary Economics
• Institutions
• Knowledge as a Factor of Production
• Neural Nets, Connectionism, Perceptrons, etc.
• Philosophies' Evil Twins
• Karl Popper
• Positivism
• Self-Organization
• Socialist Calculation Debate

Recommended, by Hayek:
• Individualism and Economic Order ["The Use of Knowledge in Society" is superb, and in "Economics and Knowledge" he seems to have been channeling evolutionary game theory... In other essays, the evil twin is very much in evidence.]
• "Competition as a Discovery Procedure" (in New Studies)

Recommended, about Hayek:
• Samuel Bowles, Alan Kirman and Rajiv Sethi, "Friedrich Hayek and the Market Algorithm", Journal of Economic Perspectives 31 (2017): 215--230
• Alan Haworth, Anti-Libertarianism: Markets, Philosophy and Myth
• Celia Lessa Kerstenetzky, "Hayek: The Evolutionary and the Evolutionist", Rationality and Society 12 (2000): 163--184
• John O'Neil, "Knowledge, Planning, and Markets: A Missing Chapter in the Socialist Calculation Debates", Economics and Philosophy 22 (2006): 55--78 [On the exchange between Hayek and Neurath.]
• Maxim Raginsky, "Hayek's Abstract Logic 9000", The Art of the Realizable 31 January 2026
• Jim Tomlinson, Hayek and the Market

To read:
• Naomi Beck, Hayek and the Evolution of Capitalism
• Theodore A. Burczak, Socialism after Hayek
• Erwin Dekker, The Viennese Students of Civilization The Meaning and Context of Austrian Economics Reconsidered
• Gerald Gaus, The Open Society and Its Complexities
• Orit Halpern, "The Future Will Not Be Calculated: Neural Nets, Neoliberalism, and Reactionary Politics", Critical Inquiry 48 (2022): 334--359
• Max Hancock, "Spontaneity and Control: Friedrich Hayek, Stafford Beer, and the Principles of Self-Organization", Modern Intellectual History forthcoming (2024+)
• Hayek
  • The Constitution of Liberty
  • The Counter-Revolution of Science
  • New Studies in Philosophy, Politics, Economics and the History of Ideas
  • The Sensory Order [Need to finish one of these years]
• Fabrizio Li Vigni, "Hayek at the Santa Fe Institute: Origins, Models, and Organization of the Cradle of Complexity Sciences", Centaurus 64 (2022): 443--481 [I should give this a fair reading, but the account of my own views, early on, based on mis-reading this old piece, does not exactly fill me with confidence]
• Quinn Slobodian, Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism