Murray N. Rothbard vs. the Philosophers - Ludwig von Mises Institute

MURRAY N. ROTHBARD VS. THE PHILOSOPHERS: UNPUBLISHED WRITINGS
24 ON HAYEK, MISES, STRAUSS, AND POLYANI
As it happens, this subject is more complex than first
appears. We have to bear in mind that Hayek uses evolutionary
premises as a starting point for his thinking about the rule
of law and law in general. It represents one of the greatest
expressions of the tradition of spontaneous order developed
by Adam Smith and Adam Ferguson in the Scottish Enlightenment
and which, continued by Edmund Burke, led to
Friedrich Carl von Savigny, Henry Maine, and Carl Menger
and the Austrian School of economics. In Hayek’s work, the
fundamental concept, and one of his most original ideas, is
that of cultural evolution, which has to do with the origin and
development of institutions such as religion, law, the market,
and, in general, self-generating and self-regulating systems
that shape a complex society. In this sense, for Hayek, rights
are certainly not natural; but, given that they have evolved
spontaneously, they cannot be termed artificial either.
A starting point in Hayek’s thought is the false dichotomy
between natural and artificial, the latter term identifying
the product of an intended project. This dichotomy
obstructs the correct understanding of the process of cultural
evolution that produced our traditions and our civilization.
There is, however, an intermediate category of phenomena
resulting from human action but not from human
planning. Following the reasoning of the late Scholastics,
the Spanish Jesuits who used the term naturalis to indicate
social phenomena that had evolved over time, 40 Hayekian
teaching explains that “In this sense, our traditional, spontaneously
evolved morals are perfectly natural rather than
artificial, and it would seem fitting to call such traditional
rules ‘natural laws’.” 41
In other words, something is natural if it has evolved spontaneously
over time. What is important is to go beyond the
40This particular reference is to Louis de Molina. See F.A. Hayek,
Law, Legislation, and Liberty, 2 vols. (London: Routledge, 1982).
41F.A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit (London: Routledge, 1988), p.
143.