4 - Hayek, the Scottish school, and contemporary economics

Summary

In his own account of his intellectual formation, F. A. Hayek has always acknowledged his indebtedness to the thinkers of the Scottish school and, above all, to Ferguson, Smith, and Hume. Indeed, in his contributions to the intellectual history of classical liberal political economy and social philosophy, Hayek has gone so far as to distinguish two divergent and opposed intellectual traditions – that of the French Enlightenment, which he sees as inspired ultimately by a variation of Cartesian rationalism, and that of the Scottish Enlightenment, with its roots in a Christian and skeptical recognition of the limits of human understanding – and has identified himself explicitly with the Scottish tradition. That Hayek's thought converges with that of the leading Scottish political economists on many fundamental questions is not in serious doubt and can easily be demonstrated. At the same time, the thought of the Scottish school is only one of the influences that have shaped Hayek's complex intellectual makeup, and these other influences, especially that of his teachers in the Austrian school, are responsible for many of the points of sharp and real divergence between Hayek and the Scottish philosophers. It is by virtue of these other influences that we may say that Hayek's thought diverges from that of the Scottish philosophers as often as it converges with it – and, often enough, in ways Hayek has not himself perceived.