# Hayek’s Humean Heritage **URL:** **By** Stuart D. Warner **Published:** January 1, 1989 --- “With the publication of The Fatal Conceit, a work that contains Hayek’s most complete treatment of moral philosophy, the pervasive Humean character of Hayek’s work becomes evident.” Systematicity seems to come in two forms. The first is apparent—correction, used to apparent—to every schoolboy who studies geometry. Here systematicity can be most quickly recognized analogically, as conforming to architecture: there is a foundation on which everything else rests and is built up out of, middle stories and, of course, a top floor. In its second variety, systematicity lies in a certain thread or threads that are pervasive within a particular body of thought. In philosophy and the moral sciences generally, it is this latter form that is apposite. And, indeed, it is in just this sense that the oeuvre of F. A. Hayek can be said to be systematic. Certainly there is at least one thread of Kantianism,¹ a thread to be found in Hayek’s analysis of “the primacy of the abstract,” that winds its way through Hayek’s epistemology, philosophy of mind,² and moral, legal, social, and political philosophy. Nevertheless, a greater appreciation of the systematic character of Hayek’s thought, especially in the moral sciences, can be gleaned by focusing on the inheritance left to Hayek by David Hume. Certain features of this inheritance, for example, Hume’s analysis of justice, are transparent in Hayek’s writing from _The Constitution of Liberty_ to _Law, Legislation and Liberty_. However, with the publication of _The Fatal Conceit_, a work that contains Hayek’s most complete treatment of moral philosophy, the pervasive Humean character of Hayek’s work becomes even more apparent. > With the publication of _The Fatal Conceit_, a work that contains Hayek’s most complete treatment of moral philosophy, the pervasive Humean character of Hayek’s work becomes even more apparent. Hayek’s theory of morals turns on three positions. First, that the maintenance of our civilization hinges on following a traditional code of morals that includes private property and the family as values of capital importance. Second, that a justification of the whole system of traditional morals, or any other system of morals for that matter, is impossible. Third, as a corollary of the second point, all justification of any norm must be in terms of other norms embedded in traditional practices. More abstractly, Hayek’s theory of morals can be seen as a critique of the whole project of producing a valid transcendental system of morals, that is, as being an attack on those systems of morals that attempt to take a higher ground and preclude any appeal to the moral practices of one’s current social order. And in so contending, Hayek is maintaining that custom has a certain kind of authority in moral matters. Furthermore, not only does this anti-transcendentalism pervade Hayek’s moral theory, but it is ubiquitous in Hayek’s philosophical positions in general, and it is probably the most important systematic thread to be found in his work. And it is just this character of Hayek’s thought that finds its most acute expression in Hume. In “Of Moral Prejudices,” an essay of capital importance in understanding Hume, and an essay almost uniformly ignored, Hume remarks, > There is a Set of Men lately sprung up amongst us, who endeavour to distinguish themselves by ridiculing every Thing, that has hitherto appear’d sacred and venerable in the eyes of Mankind. Reason, Sobriety, Honour, Friendship, Marriage, are the perpetual Subjects of their insipid Raillery....Were the Schemes of these Antireformers to take Place, all the Bonds of Society must be broke\[.\]³ After this remarkable passage, Hume then goes on to decry “that grave philosophic Endeavour after Perfection, which under the pretext of reforming Prejudices and Errors, strikes at all the most endearing Sentiments of the Heart\[.\]” For Hume, there is an authority in prejudice (or custom) that is denied to reason. Although “Reason first appears in possession of the throne, prescribing laws, and imposing maxims, with an absolute sway and authority,”⁴ we must realize, Hume argues in his _Treatise of Human Nature_ (bk. I, pt. IV), that “Reason as King” leads either to incoherence or an unacknowledged use of prejudice or custom in order to avoid that incoherence. Coherent and consistent philosophical reflection requires, in the moral domain and elsewhere, that we begin our theorizing by accepting the prejudices or customs of what Hume calls “common life” as true, and only reject them in the light of other such customs. On Hume’s view, then, there is a certain “internal” framework in which all analysis and all justification _must_ take place. And it is for this reason (_pace_ Jonathan Harrison), that Hume has no truck with moral scepticism. At least two important similarities between Hayek and Hume are now visible. First, for both of them, a traditional system of morals, containing certain values, is necessary to the peace and order of a free society. Second, and more important for the purposes of this brief note, Hume and Hayek both reject transcendental approaches to philosophy and the moral sciences. In closing, I would like to suggest that one result of rejecting the transcendental turn, in the manner in which Hume and Hayek do, is that the gordian knot of the “is-ought” problem can be untied, for one can theorize norms, in the only way I believe they can be theorized, as being > One result of rejecting the transcendental turn, in the manner in which Hume and Hayek do, is that the gordian knot of the “is-ought” problem can be untied. constitutive of certain kinds of practices. Of course, this would require showing, as I think is true, that Hume was not arguing that one could not derive an ought from an is, and showing that although Hayek claims that he is following Hume in asserting that one cannot derive an ought from an is, he is not following Hume on this score (since Hume does not hold that), nor is it a position that Hayek himself really believes! Ultimately, Hume was spawning a revolution in moral theory, and Hayek is one of few contemporary Humeans in this regard; but this must be argued for on another occasion. ## Notes ¹I say Kantianism rather that Kant because it is far from clear that Hayek ever read Kant in any detail. ²Cf. S.D. Warner and C.S.Bailey, “The Primacy of the Abstract: From Theoretical Psychology to Neuroscience,” paper presented at the International Neutral Network Society meeting, September 7, 1988. ³In _Essays: Moral, Political, and Literary_, ed. by Eugene Miller, rev. ed. (Indianapolis: Liberty Classics, 1987), pp. 538-39. ⁴David Hume, _A Treatise of Human Nature_, bk 1, pt 4 sec. 1. ⁵And also much more clearly in the final section of his _An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding_. Indeed, when Hume rejects his _Treatise_ because of his faulty style, I believe he has the opaque argument against transcendental philosophy foremost in mind.