24. “Hayek and Departure from Praxeology”
by Jakub Wozinski
Abstract: Friedrich von Hayek is mostly known as a staunch critic of naturalist fallacy. It is claimed in the article that having been heavily influenced by Epicurus, he commited an identical error that he himself criticized. This opinion is based on Hayek’s application of Ernst Mach mind-body dualism criticism, Epicurean theory of irrational ethics and falsificationistic theory of knowledge related with atomistic view of the universe.
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If Mr. Wozinski had bothered to read Popper’s works instead of relying on interpretations from others he would realize that Popper’s empiricism as it relates to Hayek is not an assault on knowledge but an attack on the predictive powers of the social sciences. Hayek’s change of focus from the entrepreneur to the problems of central planning and the ways to escape its horrors is not a true departure from Praxeology. Hayek simply expanded his approach. It must be said that in the face of totalitarian government and Keynesian statism becoming the norm that simply describing “human action” was no longer a satisfactory reply. It should be noted that Rothbard especially and Hoppe also spent much of their efforts writing about what was wrong with government. These writings are functionally positivist; couched as they are in what ranges from pessimistic normativism to dystopian prophecy. Hayek’s embrace of positivism, which can be traced to the decline of enlightenment liberalism, increasing orthodoxy, to the point of quasi-religious fervor, within the field of economics and the disintegration of the previous political structure did not represent a break with Praxeology per se. Hayek truly broke with Praxeology was when he questioned the idea of a “gold standard” in favor of free banking. In doing so, he questioned Mises’s interpretation of Menger that the market will always choose commodity-based money and Rothbard’s pessimistic normative view of the banking system, which was based on taking Mises’s interpretation as gopel, that banks were corrupt and evil rather than overregulated providers of an actual service that could be a check on or a replacement for a government monopoly through competition.
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