Hayek's Challenge: An Intellectual Biography of F.A. Hayek
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Manufacturer: University Of Chicago Press
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 330.092
EAN: 9780226091938
ISBN: 0226091937
Label: University Of Chicago Press
Manufacturer: University Of Chicago Press
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 500
Publication Date: 2005-12-15
Publisher: University Of Chicago Press
Studio: University Of Chicago Press
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Editorial Reviews:
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Friedrich A. Hayek is regarded as one of the preeminent social theorists of the twentieth century as much for his work outside of economics as for his work within it. During a career spanning several decades, he made contributions in fields as diverse as psychology, political philosophy, the history of ideas, and the methodology of the social sciences. Bruce Caldwell—editor of The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek—understands Hayek's thought like few others, and with this book he offers us the first full intellectual biography of this pivotal economic theorist.
As Hayek's ideas matured, he became increasingly critical of developments within mainstream economics; his works evolved in striking—and sometimes seemingly contradictory—ways. Caldwell is ideally suited to explain the complex evolution of Hayek's thought, and his analysis here is nothing short of brilliant, impressively situating Hayek in a broader intellectual context, unpacking the often difficult turns in his thinking, and showing how his economic ideas came to inform his ideas on the other social sciences.
"Hayek is fortunate in his biographer. Hayek's Challenge is a success, and Caldwell proves himself capable of presenting Hayek's ideas—in all fields—with both depth and clarity. . . . Hayek's challenge is worth remembering, and Bruce Caldwell has done a great service by reminding us of it."—Jason Steorts, National Review
"Bruce Caldwell's intellectual biography of the great Austrian is a wonderful work."—Richard D. North, Independent (UK)
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Wide Ranging, Lively and Clear
Comment: This is one of the best non-fiction books I have read in a long time. I have no idea how I came to buy this - I rarely read biographies, consider myself left-wing, am a computer programmer who was educated as a physicist (so have no background in economics), and only vaguely recognise his name - so must assume someone recommended it to me. Whoever that person was: Thank-you!
I think there are two things that makes this such a good read. Most important is the subject matter - Hayek seems to have been a pretty smart chap who was interested by, and contributed to, a wide range of subjects, at a time (the latter 2/3s of the twentieth century) when a lot was happening. And because he kept shifting fields and, to some extent, revising his opinions, you get to watch the evolution of a wide range of disciplines.
So this book touches on subjects like scientific methodology; emergent behaviours; how money acts as a way to signal information; the foundations of economics (do you have to assume everyone is "perfectly greedy", for example?); models of consciousness; evolutionary biology and group selection - interesting problems that are relevant today, presented in a historical context that is extremely helpful in understanding their peculiarities. Maybe it sounds crazy (or stupid), but until I read this book I had no idea how history could be so useful, relevant and informative.
Much credit must also go (my "second reason") to the author - I think this is impressively well written. Caldwell is a very careful guide who takes pains not only to justify what he says, but also gently directs you through what could be a terribly confusing and complex journey by identifying common threads, summarizing discussions, and repeatedly placing everything within its proper context. Please write another book (how about Popper?)!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Are we having fun yet?
Comment: I do not know who the target audience was here, but it certainly was not me, and I am a big Hayek fan. This book is way over my head. Perhaps a doctorate in economics or philosophy would make this work easier to read, but I don't think the average intelligent, interested reader will want to struggle though this material. It never comes up for air.
Customer Rating:
Summary: An other opinion heard from
Comment: First off, I want to echo the other reviewers in my praise for the book. The background in economic history was valuable to me and helps put the work that Hayek did into perspective. Though it may be "academic" (any look at the philosophy behind economics is probably not for the same audience as more instrumental books -- like "How to be successful" or whatever). That being said the book is well written and if anyone is interested in the influence of positivism on economics, the division of psychology and economics into separate disciplines, the roots of socialism and other foundational material, this book presents that information in a logical, clear way.
It cautions at the beginning that Hayek's work was complex and interdependent. There is a tendancy to take a paragraph by Hayek from one place and use it as a representation of the whole, like the blind men and the elephant. I would suggest strongly that to call him foundational in the current US conversativism is probably wrong. One clue is that as an extra to the "Constitution of Liberty" there is an essay by Hayek called "Why I am not a conservative."
Hayek was fascinated with "knowledge" in the sense that somehow humans manage to coordiante activity and believe that we share knowledge, but in reality it is not possible. Each of sees what we see and we do not see what others see. Somehow, unconsciously, we have evolved a way of being able to use the knowledge of others as well as our own.
His argument against socialism was basically that it breaks some of the ways of knowing what others are doing. A standard definition of Economics is that it is about how people make decisions in conditions of scarcity. In other words, there is an assumption that there is never enough to go around. If you think about it, even people with virtually unlimited amounts of money still compete with each other for status and other such things. We are all often in a position that if we choose X, then we cannot have Y.
Hayek thinks that that decision should be left up to the individual. He says that the mistake that people who believe that scientific central planning make is that they believe there is more of a consensus that there is. Someone's choices wind up overriding other's choices. There is more to it than this, but this is the basis of the argument. It is simple and not really one that falls easily on a liberal/conservative spectrum.
It is, however, probably the source of the claim that he is "conservative." Maggie Thatcher was a fan of Hayek as was, apparently, Ronald Reagan. It can be construed that the opposite of governments actively trying manage economies is lazie fare, hands off, anything goes conservativism. But that would be a misreading of Hayek and simply because a conservative likes Hayek's arguments about one topic does not make Hayek a conservative.
There is another point where Hayek would probably diverge widely from current "conservatives." By popular demand the borders in the US are getting tighter. For instance, it is now difficult to come back and forth from Canada, foreign graduate students are looking elsewhere, the "conservative" governor of California (himself an Austrian and alledgedly a fan of Hayek) is supporting vigilanties to prevent border crossings from Mexico. It does not seem that this is condusive to "knowledge" in the sense that Hayek uses it, as something that is distributed throughout humanity.
Hayek's greatest interest was in how we each take our little snapshot of the world and interact with others to build stable social structures without any direction. It is not that someone decides that we should have a structure like such and such, we find that these structures are there and we can all recognize them. In a way, he is talking about the "invisible hand" of Adam Smith. Somehow we coordinate activity so that I can be writing this right now on a computer I got somewhere, a DSL connection and so on and I have not talked to the people involved with making it happen, they have not talked to each other and no one directed them to do it.
Hayek is interested in the rules that make that happen. Now we talk of complex adaptive systems and the idea of "spontaneous order" is widely studied to day. Current work on "connectionist networks" now mention Hayek. He was way ahead of his time.
I also want to point out that even though some call him "the father of libertarianism" he was not against governments making rules that cause markets to function better, for instance, regulation against monopoly. Libertarians were up in arms against the threatened breakup of Microsoft, something Hayek would not have been against in principle.
I hope more people will read this book. It is remarkable how many ideas we think are brand new have been around for a while. This book helped me understand how they got sidelined. It is really a lively book, filled with people as well as ideas, which is important, because sometimes politics trumps insight. Hayek's remarkable ideas are just beginning to be widely noticed and recognizing what is happening is an exciting benefit of this book.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Amazing bio of an amazing thinker!
Comment: Tasked with the need to understand a contemporary, conservative thinker in a doctoral course on social justice, I was enriched by the professor's suggestion that I focus on Hayek. In due course I came upon this book by Caldwell. I wish to echo the earlier reviewers praise - this book is everything an intellectual history should be. The reader will become intimately familiar with the historical antecedents to Hayek, the academic, cultural, and historical milieu in which he worked, and the likely future his ideas will have.I approached this book as a complete novice. I had never heard of Hayek, and frankly, reading this book stretched my 18 hours of undergraduate economics about as far as they could be stretched, but I was left with an astonishing respect for this economist turned political theorist. How is it possible that Hayek could have escaped my notice for 50 years? One hundred and thirty pages are devoted, not to Hayek, but to Austrian school economics (i.e. - subjective value, marginalism, entrepreneurship) and its founder Carl Menger. Caldwell introduces key figures in the Austrian school at length (Bohm-Bawerk, Wieser, and Mises) as well as the chief protagonists of the school (German historical, socialism). Into this fray comes Hayek, an ambitious but not a particularly aggressive academic. Any attempt at summarizing Hayek's thought is easily criticized, but from my personal perspective, Hayek seems to have been a master at synthesis. He linked what today would be called cognitive psychology with philosophy to produce an epistemology that is foundational to all his subsequent work. Further, he linked this epistemology with social evolution to explain social advance, social stability, and social institutions and values. Epistemologically, Hayek understood human beings to possess a subjective ignorance. He denounced the "rational economic man" as a fiction, but asserted the importance of the free market supply/demand pricing mechanism. Without this pricing mechanism, economic planning was doomed to inefficiency and competitive disadvantage while the individual was cast adrift without any objective anchors with which to make decisions. Without the freedom to pursue subjective goals, however ignorant, there was no individual liberty. It was from the random and chaotic subjectively ignorant decisions of the individual that social institutions evolved (i.e. - order out of chaos). The fittest of these social constructs prevail over time and form the framework of stability essential for the maintenance of a free marketplace and for the subjective projection of future value. Hayek was awarded a Nobel Prize for economics in 1974 and the American Medal of Freedom in 1992 by then president George Bush, Sr. After spending a semester reading about this man and his ideas, I have become convinced that Hayek is a foundational thinker undergirding the conservative resurgence in America during the past 40 years. It is unlikely that there will ever be a finer intellectual biography than that provided by Caldwell. Everyone interested in social policy, social justice, and contemporary trends should become familiar with this book. One last warning, Caldwell writes as an academic for academics. Footnotes abound, and there are four appendices directed at specialists. A lay reader will frequently realize that he cannot appreciate all of the subtle points that Caldwell is making. Despite these facts, this is a readable book worth the effort.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Caldwell, B. Hayek's Challenge
Comment: On the plane to and from the Southern Economic Association meetings in San Antonio (including a 3 hour delay in Dallas on the way home) in November I had the opportunity to read the best book written in Austrian economics in a generation -- Bruce Caldwell's Hayek's Challenge (University of Chicago Press, 2003). Caldwell, as to be expected, is a master historian of thought and constructs a narrative of Hayek's evolution of as a thinker that is simply better than any alternative account. And, in the process, Caldwell tells the story of the development of Austrian economics from Menger to today better than I have ever seen. This is a phenomenal work of scholarship and a beautifully written book. The book represents the history of economics as it should be written --- a subtle treatment of economic doctrine, contextualization of the evolution of argument within its broader history of philosophical, political and economic debates, and engagingly written. As far as economics goes, this book is a page turner. It is nothing short of a brilliant. Bruce Caldwell has written, in my opinion, the best book in economics for 2003.
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