Hayek's Demonstration Of Liberty And His Explanation Mode

AbstractThis thesis tries to get a relatively clear and orderly grasp of both the demonstration of liberty and the explanation mode of Hayek, who is one of the most important theoreticians of liberalism of the 20th century. And in this process, this thesis also wants, on the one hand, to correct an inappropriate explanation of Mr. Deng Zheng-lai about Hayek, and, on the other hand, to analyze concisely one of the internal flaws of Hayek's theory on liberty, namely, the trend of argument in circles.This thesis contains three chapters. The first chapter tries to describe preliminarily Hayek's demonstration of liberty and his explanation mode. For this purpose, this thesis begins with Hayek's definition of liberty; then gradually introduces some key concepts such as coercion, general rules, spontaneous social order, cultural evolution, and so on; and expounds in turn the logic of Hayek's demonstration of liberty and the logic of formation of spontaneous order of society; eventually brings forth, with/by a concise chart, a preliminary summary illumination of the relation of identity between the two logics and of the internal framework of the system of Hayek's theory on liberty.The second chapter wants to get a relatively deeper understanding of Hayek's demonstration of liberty and his explanation mode. To reach this end, this chapter first corrects Mr. Deng Zheng-lai's inappropriate explanation of Hayek's theory; then gives an account of the relation of mutual support between Hayek's theory of spontaneous social order and of cultural evolution; and proceeds to reach a deeper understanding of Hayek's theory by way of a revisal of the chart provided in the first chapter.On the basis of the deeper understanding above, the third chapter tries to give a concise analysis of the trend of Hayek's argument in circles. For this purpose, this chapter first provides the brief reasons of why Hayek's explanation mode of liberty has the trend of argument in circles; then, basing on the response of two possible reactions, it shifts to an explanation of so-called "explanational framework"; finally, it brings forth a summary by way of revealing a dilemma about Hayek.