Advanced Topics in Liberty

Hayek on Liberty - February(2)

February 1-3, 2008 - Washington, DC 

This conference offers an in-depth look at some of the fundamental ideas of F. A. Hayek. These include Hayek’s discussion of the rule of law and the importance of private property, his discussion of the market as a means of transmitting information and the significance of local knowledge, and his critique of collectivism and central planning.

Discussion Leader

Eric Mack
Tulane University

Eric Mack is Professor of Philosophy at Tulane University where he is also a member of the faculty of the Murphy Institute of Political Economy. He received his B.A. in Philosophy from Union College and his M.A. and Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Rochester. He has been a Visiting Fellow in Political Philosophy at Harvard University and a Visiting Research Scholar at the Social Philosophy and Policy Center at Bowling Green State University.

He specializes in social and political philosophy, ethics, and the philosophy of law. He has edited two books, Auberon Herbert's The Right and Wrong of Compulsion by the State and Other Essays and Herbert Spencer's Man versus the State and Other Essays. He has published about 70 articles in scholarly journals and anthologies. These have primarily been on such topics as: the agent-relativity of value, the nature and foundation of moral rights, property rights, economic justice, Lockean provisos, rights and public goods, liberalism and pluralism, justified killing, anarchism, and bad samaritanism. Among his organizational affiliations, he is currently President of the Louisiana Association of Scholars.

Conference Readings

Session I: Central Planning

  • Friedrich Hayek’s “Freedom and the Economic System”

Session II: The Knowledge Problem

  • Friedrich Hayek’s “The Use of Knowledge in Society”
  • Hayek’s “The Pretense of Knowledge” in New Studies in Philosophy, Politics, Economics, and the History of Ideas

Session III: The Constitution of Liberty

  • The Constitution of Liberty, Chapters 1–3

Session IV: Spontaneous Order

  • The Constitution of Liberty, Chapters 4–6

Session V: Coercion, Order, and the Rule of Law

  • The Constitution of Liberty, Chapters 9–11
  • Friedrich Hayek’s “Epilogue: The Three Sources of Human Values” in Law, Legislation, and Liberty

Session VI: Hayek, Classical Liberalism, and Conservatism

  • The Constitution of Liberty, “Postscript: Why I am Not a Conservative.”

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