The Condition Of Freedom

The ancient liberalism taking orders of Scotland moral philosophy tradition encountered unprecedented challenge around the 20th Century. In the 19th Century the national power was restricted, but was increasingly expanded in the 20th Century. It's seriously threatened the individual freedom. To protect the individual freedom, Hayek proved the individual freedom again. Traditional classical liberal theorists are both beginning from human nature to prove the individual freedom. But theorists of other schools criticized it seriously accompanying with it. The stress of the criticism is that the theory of human nature put individual atomization, completely ignoring the social background of individual. Individual was fully abstracted. For this kind of criticism, the intrinsic traditional classical liberal theorists can't response to it. But the cognition of freedom of Hayek not only succeeded to the base of human nature, but also broke through the intrinsic moralism of human nature, because he researched the human nature under the background of social constitution. The breakout of the research framework makes the inherent criticism to liberalism instantly losing the pertinence, so Hayek become the leader of safeguarding liberalism in the new era. From then on, Hayek's thought has been researched. Some people elaborate it, some people criticize it, and some people interpret and apply for it. In 1990s, because the world situation has occurred unheard-of great change, Hayek has done some forward-looking research about the whole situation in his theory, so he attracts the most attention.The research about Hayek mainly plays emphasis upon the doctrinal interpretation that more fastened on the interpretation about the nature of the freedom, spontaneous social order and constitution theory and so on. But it pays less attention about the question that Hayek wants to interpret and to face: to make the individual freedom come true. Hayek defended the liberalism in his whole life, so safeguard freedom is the core theme in his theory. This dissertation makes detailed discourse on the condition of freedom that is the theme of the dissertation.Hayek is the representative person of the classic liberalism in the new period, so if we want to understand his freedom thought, we must give him a corresponding position in the corresponding theory tradition to understand the relation between Hayek's thought and its source, and to find the rough changes of the theory venation. Meanwhile, it has an introduction about the era background that Hayek's thought has come into being upon it, because theory comes through age background. Through the theory combines the age background, we can truly understand the source of Hayek's thought. Hayek thinks that freedom is a kind of regulation and a kind of value. It exists depending on the freedom is the necessary condition of the social spontaneous order, and it enhances the development and progress of society, and it also is the regulation of the spontaneous revolve of the society.Because freedom is the core thought of Hayek, so it's necessary to interpret the nature of freedom. The freedom that Hayek advocates is a kind of nugatory freedom that it only tells people behavior is allowable behavior except the forbidden behavior. That is different from other freedom thought. It is a kind of law freedom. Because the relationship among freedom, equality and democracy is inextricably involved in modern times, the dissertation compare and analysis them.Logically, freedom thought runs though in this logical venation: individual freedom is the premise of the freedom, and freedom is the necessary condition of the social spontaneous order. The main character of Hayek's individualism thought is that individual reason is not full, and the methodology individualism, through it he puts individual under the background of social order, meanwhile he emphasis the limitation of individual. He changes the moralism into mental faculty theory of human nature and he overcomes the shortcoming of atomic individual. Because individual reason is not full, it's necessary to communicate between people. In this process, people gradually forms kinds of regulations that in favor of people's life. People follow this regulations and continuous adapt their behavior to form a kind of relative stable behavior structure making the society to be an ordered situation, this is social spontaneous order. Social spontaneous order is a kind of expended order, because it can be expended following the scope of the behavior of the process of communication. In this spontaneous order, the decisive regulation is the inner regulation that people's behavior be regulated and restricted by and its change will affect the social order and the development of social itself. Organization order and outer regulation correspond to the spontaneous order and inner regulation. Organization order wholly serves for the spontaneous order, but the change of its regulation has relative independence. In the society, organization order has its existed reason and necessary, because it can resolve the'free riding'and'the Tragedy of the commons'that can't be resolved by inner regulations.Social spontaneous order is dominated by the inner regulation. The form and creation of the regulation needs people to trial-and-error and accumulate experiences. So people need enough behavior square to find the suitable new regulation and it's necessary to protect the square to make people to allodium choice. This is private squares. In other words, it actually needs to maintain freedom. But maintain freedom is one of the conditions to make the freedom come true. Other question is that how to carry out the communication in the private squares, especially the change to satisfy the material necessary. Private ownership of property and the separation of property provide the base for the succeed change. The shortcoming of the system is that it can lead to polarize of property, to make the pattern of ownership divided into the controlled right of self and the distributive right of income, and to separate them to make up the inequality. The most dangerous factors for freedom are the arbitrary enforcement. Although country is a kind of system order, but it comes through the necessary of spontaneous social order, it easily threatens the individual freedom when it executes the function given by society. The obvious prove is that governmental power expends and permeates in the everywhere in the democracy system. To hold back the dilation of public power, Hayek reiterates the spirit of law, hoping to remodel the constitution system to protect individual freedom and to provide corresponding condition to make the freedom come true. For this purpose, Hayek transforms the legislative parliament to be pure legislative parliament and governing parliament basing on the intrinsic separation of the executive, legislative and judicial powers. If there are disputes between each other, the jurisdictional right belongs to the constitution court. Hayek's constitution mechanism is a kind of distributive power system that justice is the core of it. He puts the jurisdictional right in the hand of justice, embodying that Hayek's mental to guard against democracy. This is a kind of mode in which legal mechanism substitutes for political mechanism.The form and development of social spontaneous order must maintain freedom that is the necessary condition of the inborn of freedom. But, carefully read up his works, we find that the grow of the social spontaneous order in favor of the carry out and maintain of freedom, because the former theorist usually put the task to maintain the social order to give to nation, Hayek considers that the social order to be a kind of spontaneous order, in order to less the important mission, then the country can pay more attention to accomplish its corresponding task following the rule of law. This is good at the realization of freedom.There are many shortcomings of his thought, e.g. he emphasis the importance to realize the cooperation in the social cooperating order and put the cooperator's independence and equality in a very preferential position, but he ignores the results of inequality of starting point. The factor threatening freedom is not only from government, but also from the great disparity of property. Though government's interference can level the disparity, the weakened party may not improve their situation. But because Hayek's constitution mechanism strictly restricts the democracy, so people using the method to improve their situation will be influenced.The discourse of freedom and illumination of the condition of freedom of Hayek mainly research the constitute factors of freedom and his object of research is the country that freedom has already formed. The only thing that Hayek worried is that people will forget the value of freedom that brings out progress and prosperous, not the freedom that people never enjoy. He warmed is only the people living in the freedom society but not concerned the people living in the enslavedness. So, we must search the road to carry out the freedom when we advocate his maintaining of freedom.In a word, Hayek reproves the core value of classic liberalism in the foundation of new theory, doing a positive contribution for the renascence of classic liberalism. Though Hayek's theory is not perfect, but the defects cannot obscure the virtues. His thought needs us to research continuously and hardly.