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Early neoliberals split over whether freedom served dignity or stood alone

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tagsja-picks, define, definitional_content, trade, corroborated, xref, category/definitional-content
aliases@philip_mirowski_nine_2020, loc. 354, @philip_mirowski_nine_2020, loc. 362

4 min read

Early neoliberals split over whether freedom served dignity or stood alone

Evidence

Although it did not appear on their agenda, early neoliberals also placed the concepts of the “human person” and “human dignity” at the heart of the matter. For many, these were the fundamental concepts and “freedom” was the best means to achieve them, particularly in times of authoritarian regimes and war. Others, like Hayek, saw in “freedom” a fundamental concept in its own right. Hayek surely thought that the dignity of the individual was fundamental, but he rejected—as always—fixed prescriptions about how to secure it or about what freedom should serve exactly. Freedom needed to be seen as a fundamental concept, not as a way to implement other fundamental concepts, he would maintain, for in a free society one also has the choice to act wrongly. — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 354

Early neoliberals were unanimous that fundamental values representing a moral order needed to be embraced and placed at the origins of a liberal society. There was disagreement over whether or not the concept of freedom was already a fundamental value or whether it was a means to an end, namely the realization of the fundamental concept of human dignity and the human person, the way in which man can, possibly, live up to his full potential. Hayek would agree on the very construction of society and its basic norms: “Like all other values, our morals are not a product but a presupposition of reason, part of the ends which the instrument of our intellect has been developed to serve. At any one stage of our evolution, the system of values into which we are born supplies the ends which our reason must serve.” He was also deeply impressed by the Catholic liberal philosopher and historian, Lord Acton, who placed human dignity at the heart of his thought. Hayek also defined “true individualism” as being based on the concept of man as a social being rather than a purely self-sufficient and isolated individual. Yet, Hayek did not call his 1960 book The Constitution of Human Dignity, but The Constitution of Liberty. Wary of what proactive jurists might do with the concept—namely, prescribe and spell out what human dignity supposedly was—Hayek always stressed the weight of the concept of freedom as fundamental, not only as a means to an end as it was for many of his fellow early neoliberals. — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 362

Categorization

  • DEFINE: Distinguishes a hard ‘freedom as terminal value’ Hayekian position from the softer ‘freedom as means to human dignity’ position that dominated early neoliberal thought.
  • corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 354; Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 362
  • XREF: connects to: Neoliberalism treats freedom as an absolute moral principle divorced from religion — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 181; Early European neoliberals privileged economic over political freedom — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 188; Liberalism’s founding assembly split over ends versus means of freedom — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 278 (+5 more)

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