On Hayek's Concept Of Liberty

In the field of Western political philosophy, liberty is undoubtedly a very important concept. Hayek insisted that the achievements of civilization in the present western world should be attributed to their belief of liberty. However, few people may know the exact meanings of liberty when they are talking about it. In the critical time of the creative construction of the modern system culture in our country, it is particularly important to understand accurately the concept of liberty which has been considered to promote the contemporary western civilization. By comprehensively analyzing Hayek's concept of liberty in depth from the perspective of Hayek's epistemology, this paper attempts to provide a new perspective for people to accurately understand Hayek's concept of liberty. This paper is divided into five parts:The first part is the introduction of this paper, which puts forward the reason of choosing the Hayek's concept of liberty as the research topic by analyzing the domestic and foreign research of Hayek's concept of liberty.The second part mainly introduces Hayek's concept of liberty from four perspective of at macro level. Firstly, this paper interprets directly Hayek's concept of liberty which is referred to the non-exist of arbitrary will coercion from others. Secondly, by analyzing and citing, this paper comes up with the conclusion that Hayek's liberty cannot be equal to negative liberty in the normal way, but the positive substance in a negative way of definition. Thirdly, by analyzing the relationship between Hayek's liberty and choice, this paper puts forward that it is not the range of choice but whether the individual will could come true or not to determine whether he is free or not. Finally, this paper explores the relationship between liberty and law. Liberty is subordinated to law in form, but in essence, only when law is equipped with the three properties of general and abstract, public and identified and equal at the same time can it be a means of protecting liberty.By using the method of comparative analysis, the third part of this paper compares Hayek's Individual liberty with three influential concepts of liberty as political liberty, inner liberty and positive liberty. Individual liberty cannot only be the same as political participation, but also not be equal to the intrinsic rationality and not be simply equivalent to wealth and power. Individual liberty ensures that individuals can achieve their legitimate desire by using their own ability.The fourth part is of the microscopic analysis of Hayek's concept of liberty. Begin with the definition of Hayek's concept of liberty as the non-exist of arbitrary will coercion from others, this part mainly analyzes the key terms"coercion"of Hayek's concept of liberty in the aspects of the meaning, method and degree of " coercion " and so on. The"coercion"Hayek having negated is the"coercion"from others, which including both of blatant violence and threats and deception or fraud from others, not all of the external coercion. Meanwhile, as the coercion from others is different in degree, it is necessary to make specific judgments in different periods basing on the specific social situation, when considering for what level of coercion needing to be banned.The fifth part, as the focus and innovation of this paper, proves the formation of Hayek's concept of liberty from the viewpoint of "ignorant" and " intellectual " respectively, in the hope of comprehensive understanding of the core of Hayek's concept of liberty in a breadth perspective. Mental characteristics of individuals and the division of their knowledge in modern times decide that the knowledge each person can know is a small part of human knowledge. In other words, each person is ignorant in front of the whole human knowledge, and this "ignorance" is no distinction, so no one can be able to master enough knowledge to structure a rational set of our sociaty, nor is there a person or a body mastering enough knowledge to coerce others. Therefore, the coercion of arbitrary will does not have its rationality in the theory of "ignorant". The development of human civilization is the progress and application of human knowledge. Because of the dispersion of human knowledge, it is necessary for each one having liberty of making decisions for his or her owm behaviors. This is the only way for each person to create new tools or to improve the old ones when he or she combines his or her unique knowledge with particular situation, and is the only reason why Hayek stressed the importance of individual liberty and the ultimate goal of forming his concept of liberty.