# Bridging the Gap Between Evolution and Natural Law **URL:** **By** Boudewijn Bouckaert **Published:** January 1, 1989 --- “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.” 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. > 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. > Hayek 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. 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.