Journal of Institutional Economics

Table of Contents - 2007 - Volume 3, Issue 03  

Research Article

Naturalizing the market on the road to revisionism: Bruce Caldwell's Hayek's challenge and the challenge of Hayek interpretation

PHILIP MIROWSKIa1 c1

a1 Department of Economics and Policy Studies, University of Notre Dame

Abstract:

Bruce Caldwell's Hayek's Challenge should be welcomed as the first serious book on one of the most important thinkers of the twentieth century. However, this review begins by pointing out a number of curious omissions and silences concerning Hayek's career in the book. We propose that the key to understanding the turns and reversals in his thought lay in his politics, and not as Caldwell has it, in some abstract philosophical doctrines. Central to that thesis is Hayek's fostering the development of Neoliberalism through such institutional structures as the Mont Pèlerin Society.

Correspondence:

c1 Correspondence to: Department of Economics and Policy Studies, University of Notre Dame. Email: mirowski.1@nd.edu

Footnotes

I should like to thank both Bruce Caldwell and Wade Hands for their reactions, without implicating them in anything inscribed here. Bruce and I have been fruitfully disputing interpretations of Hayek for some time now. Intellectual compadres are hard to find in the modern information society. Without their help and forbearance, I think I would end up just another geriatric blogger: a real danger when it comes to Hayek commentary.