Hayek on Social Evolution

This is a lecture by Hayek on social evolution of morality and social norms given in 1983 at George Mason University. More on the lecture can be read here. Hayek is introduced by Karen Vaughn, no less.

And, no, I have not converted to Austrian economics: this is of scholarly and historical interest to me. Furthermore, I do not buy the excessive emphasis by Hayek on unplanned, emergent processes in social, moral, legal and economic life. There is, and always has been, a great deal of planning and conscious design. Let me take one example: the Christian religion is fundamental to Western civilisation. How was it established as the offical religion of the Roman empire? The reason is that emperors decided to adopt it first as the state-sponsored religion (by Constantine) and later as the official religion by active violence and persecution of pagan religions and philosophies, which culminated in the anti-pagan decrees of the emperor Theodosius I (for a critical discussion of this repression, see Cameron 2011: 68-74). Christianity, as the religion of the West and with all of its moral influences, was established by conscious design, not by unplanned, emergent processes.

The conscious, planning, designing mind is one of the fundamental traits of our species. But I would say of course that many of our innate moral intuitions are the product of our evolution (cf. Hayek’s remarks from 20.21), as well as social and cultural influences.

At 46.14 onwards, I note that Hayek badly misunderstands the work of Richard Dawkins on social evolution and the idea of the meme.





BIBLIOGRAPHY

Cameron, A. 2011. The Last Pagans of Rome, Oxford University Press, Oxford.