ȂȈȇ Partʺʺ: Politics and PhilosophyĻe book was an immediate sensation. It had an enormous popular
audience, partly through a condensation in theReader’s Digest, and has
been translated into some sixteen languages.
If we are not now on the road to serfdom—and we do not seem to
be—some of the credit for that must go to Friedrich Hayek. In salute to
him we publish the following article by a distinguished student of Hayek’s
work, Professor Leland Yeager of the University of Virginia.
Ŕōťőŗ śŚ ŠŔő ŜşťŏŔśŘśœť śŒ şśŏŕōŘŕşř ōŚŐ ŒŞőőŐśř
Now, forty years after its publication, is a good time to reconsider Friedrich
Hayek’sĻe Road to Serfdom(ȀȈȃȃ). George Orwell’sdzǻǺǶalso deserves
mention, since Orwell had written a kind review of Hayek’s book before
writing his own.Ȁ
Someone reading a book again after a long interval is likely to receive
a rather different message. Ļis fact illustrates the thesis that Hayek devel-
ops inĻe Sensory Order(published inȀȈȄȁbut derived from a paper
drafted over thirty years earlier). I’d like to explain my point, and also
hail Hayek’s inadequately remembered work in psychology, by first sur-
veying that book. A further link between his books ofȀȈȃȃandȀȈȄȁis
that Hayek often deployed psychological insights inĻe Road to Serfdom
to explain, for example, why certain wrong ideas nevertheless have wide
appeal. Fully appreciating Hayek’s work in economics and political science
requires knowing of his interest in psychology.
Ŕōťőŗ’ş ŜşťŏŔśŘśœŕŏōŘ ŐśŏŠŞŕŚőş
AlthoughĻe Sensory Orderdoes not stress the connection, Hayek’s psy-
chological doctrines do mesh well with his methodology in economics
and his approach to practical affairs. A sharp distinction between theory
and fact or between theory and practice is not tenable. All our actions, all
our observations of fact, even all our supposedly ultimate or irreducible
sense perceptions are shot through with theory. Even at the level closest
to bare fact, theory is indispensable to making sense out of the world and
even to perceiving it.
We never perceive unique properties of individual objects but only
properties that objects have in common. Perception always involves
ȀHayek mentions Orwell’s review in a new foreword toĻe Road to Serfdom(Hayek
ȀȈȃȃ/ȀȈȄȅ, p. viii n.).