Bridging the Gap Between Evolution and Natural Law

Reading Hayek’s work The Fatal Conceit should
evoke for each honest and open-minded reader a
great intellectual experience. For page after page,
Hayek shows his rare ability to bring together theories and
arguments from various scientific research fields—such as
economics, history, ethics, biology, law, and epistemology—
and to assemble them in one consistent intellectual framework concerning the understanding of human evolution and
progress. Indeed, students already acquainted with the
former works of this intellectual giant will not be surprised
by dramatic innovations in the theories of the author.
The Fatal Conceit contrasts two broadly defined intellectual approaches concerning the structuring of human society:
constructivist rationalism and a critical rationalist evolutionism. The contention that this opposition is both crucial and
basic was already set forth in Hayek’s three-volume work
Law, Legislation and Liberty. Nevertheless, The Fatal
Conceit is more than a summary. More than in any other
work, Hayek succeeds in reordering intellectual antagonisms
in different fields along the above mentioned lines. Hayek is
able, for example, to show the intellectual (and even emotional) link between primitive group-morality, classical
Greek philosophy, modern rationalist constructivism, and
attitudes among the majority of the members of the intellectual class in non-socialist countries. Making such links is
daring and provocative, but they are forged in this work from
extensive research in intellectual, political, and economic
history. There is no need to emphasize the usefulness of
these intellectual affiliations as a tool in the intellectual
debate with the enemies of a free society. By understanding their attitudes, their feelings, their frustrations, their ignorance and, above all, the grounds of their ignorance, we will
be better able to engage them in debate.
This intellectual manifesto of critical rationalist evolutionism elicits further questions and problems. The evolutionist
approach set forth in The Fatal Conceit has made contemporary classical liberalism a richer resource for understanding
our own history. The evolutionist scheme allows us to
understand the gradual achievement of the traditions and
rules underlying the extended order of the market. In other
words, only an evolutionist approach makes us able to
understand why relative freedom and growing wealth was
historically possible in societies lacking an explicit liberal
ideological framework.

In this respect Hayek’s contribution to the liberal intellectual tradition is unique and seminal. He has demonstrated
why and how rules and institutions that fostered liberty were
preserved in societies whose general belief system was a-
liberal, not to say anti-liberal. By elaborating this thesis
Hayek has enlarged liberalism, adding to it a genuine
historical dimension. The evolutionist approach suggests that
liberalism is more than an ideology articulated at a given
moment in intellectual history and followed up by certain
political and economic successes.

By pointing to the abilities of mankind to develop institutions and traditions, which are as distinct from instinct as
they are from purposeful and deliberate construction,
evolutionism links liberalism and the market economy with
the basic characteristics of man-as-such. In other words, the
freedom espoused and defended by liberalism is more than
the outcome of a certain set of opinions. It is the outcome of man-as-cultural-being. To put it more explicitly, critical rationalist evolutionism leads to the equation of liberalism, cultural propensities and civilization, while the negation of liberalism is tantamount to the end of civilization and the death of cultural man.

This fundamental message, presented so forcefully in The Fatal Conceit, suggests that it might be possible to complete liberalism (already enlarged by Hayek with the addition of a historical dimension) with an ethic that transcends evolutionism without contradicting it. It is often argued that evolutionism as such is philosophically flawed because it is based on the naturalistic fallacy. Hayek, being well aware of this argument and mentioning it explicitly (see p. 27), refutes this argument by arguing that his version of evolutionism does not entail that all the results of whatever tradition are ethically justifiable. His contention is only (but certainly) that many results that one cannot disapprove ex post without being utterly immoral or unreasonable (e.g., prosperity, more freedom, and opportunities for population growth), are due to the development of traditions that were not ethically and deliberately justified ex ante by their initiators.

One need not contradict this moderate version of evolutionism by supposing that man is able to select, to maintain, or to refine certain traditions and institutions—perhaps initiated for other reasons—because of the ethical value of their effects. Nor is it contradictory to the Hayekian theory to suggest that it is intellectually possible to elaborate an ethical theory in which the intrinsic ethical value of historically selected rules and institutions is linked with the cultural propensities of man as part of human nature. The establishment of such relationships opens the possibility of bridging the still-existing gap within the liberal tradition between the evolutionist approach (based on conjectural history and economic analysis) and the non-constructivist version of natural-law theory (based on ethical argumentation about human nature).

In this respect The Fatal Conceit is more than a brilliant summary of a lifelong career dedicated to science, freedom, and intellectual honesty. The Fatal Conceit is at the same time a program for the further development and refinement of liberalism. In this way The Fatal Conceit is also an invitation to the younger generation of intellectuals who are committed to freedom to continue the work of this great master.