JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. INTRODUCTIONWhy should a book on political philosophy be reviewed in an economics journal? If one reads the 'Note to contributors' published regularly on the back cover of this journal it would be difficult to believe that its editors would countenance such use of their scarce resources. Perhaps the criteria there stated are relaxed when the author of the book is one who once was a distinguished economist, since, like other members of collegial groups, economists are interested in what the alumni have been doing lately. In the case of F.A. Hayek, such a justification may be sufficient, but is not necessary, since his writings on political philosophy are so intimately connected with economic theory as to constitute virtually an application or extension of economics. Hayek belongs to the growing band of economists who not only perceive that economics has a great deal to say about many of the specific problems and topics of political philosophy (the distribution of income, property rights, collective choice, specialization and integration, constitutional organization, and so on), but also view economic theory as providing foundations for the solution of more general, more abstract and more fundamental philosophical issues such as justice and freedom. Moreover, Hayek is the most important of these 'political economists'; at least he is the most important of those whose dominating commitment is to 'liberalism' in the nineteenth-century sense of that term. Hayek's conception of the Review article / Article critique / 471 relation of economics to political philosophy is, in my view, mistaken, and his political philosophy itself is fatally flawed, but his writings on these matters are unequalled in profundity, historical scholarship, and current relevance. They must be seriously considered by all economists who recognize the great breadth and significance of their discipline. 'This review essay focuses upon Hayek's latest book, Law, Legislation and Liberty; but it must be considered as a continuation of a line of thought that began with The Road to Serfdom (1944) and was amplified by The Constitution of Liberty (1960).2 Born (1899) and educated in Vienna, Hayek migrated to England in 1931, just before the accession of the Nazis to power in Germany. Full of admiration for the liberal character of English political thought, tradition, and practice, Hayek became convinced that these great values were threatened not by Putsch or by the rise of a particular political party as in Germany, but by a gradual and general erosion of the essential foundations of a liberal social order. The Road to Serfdom was dedicated 'To the Socialists of all Parties,' by which Hayek meant not only those who consci...
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