F·A·Hayek’s Social Critical Theory

F-A-Hayek (1899-1992) was one of the greatest thinkers of the West in20century.He played the field academically and made great contributions to the improvement of social sciences, So, he had far-reaching influence on the development of the ideology growing in the west world."The spontaneous order" or "Extended order"constitutes the core of Hayek’s theory. It is different from the artificial order or organization which foundation was composed by particular goals, orders or plans,because it is based on its members’respective expectation resulting from abstract rules and others behavior,as well as the actions led by the owners will. We can consider it as a natural and object historical-social progress which independent from concrete goal, based on and towards individual destination,improved by the force of competition, protected by the rule of law and finally owned the feature of constant extension. For the statement above, Hayek saw Capitalism based on the market economy as the best representation of "the spontaneous order".According to the research of this order, he provided a system of social critical theory which focused on some ideas prevailing in academe as well as measures coming from governments, with the hope that his theory can protect the conditions of "The spontaneous order",Only in this way can we keep both the value of the individual and the sustainable growth of human civilization. The author of this paper tried to investigate and criticize Hayek’s social critical theory by inquiring into "the spontaneous order". Firstly, in the introduction section, author elaborated some information about Hayek’s life experience, works, as well as the way how we Chinese understood them. As a learned scholar who has a lot of works, he also actively took part in the debates concerning policies of government and many social problems in that days, which gave him great fame and had effected many scholars and government leaders in west world. Meanwhile, according to the achievements and shortcomings in the studying of Hayek’theory, the author of this paper was intended to response rightly to these merits and faults. In chapter one, the author focused on the core of Hayek’s theory="The spontaneous order"-and the background of this important concept,by way of comparison, this theory owned its theoretical characteristics and status in the whole idea of Hayek. In chapter two, The author briefly described the main contents of Hayek’s theory of social criticism, including the fields of philosophy, economics, political philosophy and legal. In his works, Hayek considered some social problems, popular opinions and the policies of governments as targets of his critical theory. At the same time, the author also elaborated the knowledge and social background of the theory, in order to fully demonstrate Hayek’s theory of social criticism,and to pave the way for the discussion below. In chapter three, the author turned his attention to specific theme, the first station was philosophy, the most distinctive feature in Hayek’s epistemological stand was the recognition of the limited nature of reason, which was contrary to Cartesian’s construct rational tradition. Hayek distinguished two rationalist tradition, this concept went through all his theory and the criticism of other areas. In chapter four, Hayek pointed out that the so-called "social justice" was an impossible "phantom". its impact to policies and behavior would generate a lot of threat to "the Spontaneous order", as well as the value of freedom and quality, So Hayek strongly criticized the concept of "social justice", and pointed out that real justice should be a "negative" justice. In chapter five, the author introduced the idea of Liberalism of Hayek, his views of defending free market might be token as an well example. Hayek is famous Western liberal thinkers, what he admitted was the classical freedom, he distinguished two different liberal traditions, and pointed out that only classical freedom is the highest value of the human society. In chapter six, the author introduced the Hayek’s criticism of the law and practice of constitutional democracy. Hayek, in his later years, mainly focused on the field of law, because he recognized that the only way to guard the freedom was by law. He knew well about law and the law system, as a result, he strongly criticized the view of legal positivism popular at that time, he pointed out that the the legal positivism fundamentally confused two types of law, and the cause of this confusion resulted from the drawbacks of the Western constitutional and democratic system, so he put forward positive proposals for reform. At last, the author summarized Hayek’s theory of social criticism and got some of constructive advises from it for the progress of law in our country. More importantly, the author pointed out that the theory of Hayek’s social criticism reflected the ideological dogmatism and the type of "Cold War", which makes Hayek’s theory face some reasonable crisis.