Friedrich August von Hayek (May 8, 1899, March 23, 1992) Chinese economist Yang Xiaokai said: "Hayek's influence on human thought may be as profound and pervasive as the influence of Confucius Thought on Chinese thought." But unlike ancient societies, which were always unconsciously subordinated to a hierarchical system, Hayek wanted all mankind to live freely.
He spent his life proving to the world that human prosperity, happiness and dignity come from individual freedom, not from any collectivism. If most of us read Hayek's thought carefully, our perception of the world would change deeply.
Hayek's admiration for freedom is embodied in the "Hayek's Three Principles".
The principle of the supremacy of freedom
According to Hayek, "Humanity is always faced with a choice: whether to seek equality in poverty or freedom in inequality." We are all too familiar with this choice, for thousands of years, the Chinese have been making such choices, and almost every time they have chosen equality over freedom, and their fate is similar to that described by Hayek, in the end, they have never been equal or free.
Hayek believed that freedom precedes equality, precedes democracy, that it has nothing to do with ability, that it does not promise happiness;Those who promise to build utopias, class-related, will eventually lead only to servile false equality – very similar to what Lu Xun described as a state of Chinese, that is, "the age of slavery."
Hayek believed that "there is no third way between liberty and slavery". Freedom is not an empty slogan, its core is to protect the individual's right to life and private propertyThe limited ethics of property rights is a natural evolutionary order, not the result of human design. This brings us to the second principle.
* Unreliability principle.
In the concept of many Chinese people, ** is the country, and the country is **. In fact, there is a huge difference between the two. The state is an imaginary community, and ** is a concrete form of governance;The state is a collection of all the lands and people, and ** is only a collection of representatives of a small number of people.
* The purpose of existence is to protect the right to life, liberty, and property of all citizens, not the other way around. For the proper functioning of the state, there is a necessity for its existence, but Hayek said that there must be oversight, there must be checks and balances, and power must be kept in a cage.
Because, man is not an angel, and the evil in the depths of human nature is hidden in the hearts of all people, **is also made up of people,** once it gains unchecked power, it can cause a national disaster. So,Hayek did not believe that greed for power could be controlled. He advocated the construction of a new type of limited **, so that power can be checked and balanced. This brings us to a third principle.
The principle of judging by the rule of law.
Chinese people often say that traditional China is "Confucianism and law", and it seems that China has been a society ruled by law since ancient times. In fact, China has been a society governed by man since ancient times, and there are very few true "spirit of the rule of law". Moreover, ancient Chinese law itself was a huge problem, and it was often only a guarantee that the emperor would do as he pleased, rather than the result of the natural rights of human beings. For example, Ming Taizu Zhu Yuanzhang has formulated a lot of *** laws.
Hayek said that bad laws are illegal. The law must be based on the natural rights of human beings and respect and protect human life, liberty and property. Therefore, the mission of the "legislator" is to discover these "rules and orders that should be taken for granted", rather than to create laws based on imagination. Only in this way can the rule of law be discussed.
The rule of law means that all citizens are under the law and ** are also under the law. At its core, the rule of law is "to create a gap between coercion and individual freedom."off the wall", so that the law cannot be crossed to harm the rights of individuals, and individuals cannot cross the law to harm the rights of others, and everyone can be free by obeying good laws.
The above "Hayek's Three Principles" are only a spark of Hayek's thought. Today, when the world is undergoing great changes, is it the resurgence of the bad order, or the blossoming of civilization in the good order?The answer is uncertain, it depends on our attitude and understanding of ideas like Hayek's who can truly travel through time and space. For everyone who loves freedom and worries about the fate of his nation and himself, Hayek's writings are undoubtedly classics worth reading again and again. The more people who read Hayek, the more freedom there is.
For this reason, we especially recommend the nine books "Understanding Hayek", among which "The Order of Feeling" is the first Chinese translation to appear. These books can be used as a primer to help readers who are not yet familiar with Hayek to have a thorough understanding of his life and main ideasYou can also read Hayek's original works in depth and absorb the wisdom of the prophets. Click on the product card below to collect it with one click.