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

MURRAY N. ROTHBARD VS. THE PHILOSOPHERS: UNPUBLISHED WRITINGS
30 ON HAYEK, MISES, STRAUSS, AND POLYANI
this sense, for Hayek, “law and legal institutions should be
examined in their relation to the processes which governed
the evolution of the customary and tradition-based practices
embedded in actual historical communities.” 50 Having said
this, it should nevertheless be emphasized that Hayek is
above all a great defender of the rule of law and that he
prefers the concept of cultural evolution to that of human
nature.
The truly irreconcilable points between the evolutionist
theory of law and Rothbard’s adherence to the concept of
natural law are rationalism and fallibilism. One of Rothbard’s
severest reprimands is, in fact, “Hayek’s continuous
and all-pervasive attack on reason.” 51 In reality, Hayek’s
attack is against the abuse of reason, against that constructive
rationalism that leads to an infinite faith in the capacity
of human reason to shape social and political institutions
as it pleases. In order to avoid any misunderstandings, it
should be noted that Hayek is not an anti-rationalist, saying,
“it is therefore better in this connection not to distinguish
between ‘rationalism’ and ‘anti-rationalism’ but to distinguish
between a constructivist and an evolutionary, or, in
Karl Popper’s terms, a naïve and a critical rationalism.” 52
Given these premises, Rothbard is unable to share the
Hayekian idea of true and false individualism, which contrasts
a rationalist tradition that is mainly French (in the
Cartesian mold and moving toward a constructivist presumption)
with a British, evolutionist, empirical and truly
liberal tradition connected by Hayek to the Whig tradition.
Rothbard criticizes the fact that thinkers of the caliber of
Thomas Jefferson, Richard Price, Joseph Priestley, and
Thomas Paine were undervalued and seen as “terrible rationalists.”
Rothbard makes a further comment, and one that
50Ibid., p. 128.
51Rothbard, “Memo to the Volker Fund on F.A. Hayek’s Constitution
of Liberty”; see p. 61 in this volume.
52Hayek, Law, Legislation, and Liberty, vol. 1, p. 29.