Hayek Free Concept Comment

This thesis studies Hayek's theory of liberty from the perspective of political philosophy. It aims explores not only the logic of Hayek's theory of liberty, but also the significance and potential that his logic of liberty has. With a full understanding of Hayek's liberty theory, the author maps the structure of Hayek's theory of liberty and the way that Hayek takes to protect liberty.The first section traces Hayek's liberty to classical liberalism tradition. After this, the paper sort out the connotation of Hayek's concept of liberty in detail by elaborating the differences that Hayek tells between two series of concepts: "liberty" and "liberties", "negative" and "positive" liberty.Hayek's view of liberty is spread by the issue of liberty protection. Through exploring the relationship among the key elements such as law, the rule of just conduct, and spontaneous order, the second part of the paper summarizes the logic path of Hayek's belief, i.e., to protect liberty relies on the rule of law.On the basis of interpreting the theory of liberty protection, this paper further studies the way that Hayek takes to protect the liberty through a framework of constitutional government. Beginning with the topic of constitutional crisis toward which the modern legal states are stepping, the author analyzes Hayek's criticism on this phenomenon which is caused by the confusion of "private" and "public" law in the course of legal practice. Finally, the paper takes Hayek's idea of new constitutional design as a guide to overcome the crisis.Any evaluation of Hayek's theory of liberty can not be made reasonably without taking the perspective of liberalism, being proud of which Hayek called himself an old Whig who devotes himself to revive the classical liberalism tradition. The last part of the paper discusses the relation between Hayek and liberalism and also the status of Hayek's liberty theory in the modern liberalism ideology.