726 "Rational conceit" leads to "the road to slavery"

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History cannot be simply reduced to academic history (it should be said that this is a common problem in today's ideological research), a living thought can never be separated from the real "problem consciousness" and only arise from the context of academic inheritance. In Europe, both Hayek and Burke, his predecessor of "negative freedom", appeared in such a "problem consciousness": the "liberal order" had been established at that time, and Burke's England had completed the "glorious" a century ago. Revolution", the European liberal order of Hayek's time was also a hundred years old, when some people were dissatisfied with the ills of this order, and every effort was made to replace it with some "perfect" plan (Rousseau- Jacobinism, Fascism and Bolsheviks are all included in this "perfect" design).

So Hayeks remind people that although the liberal order is not perfect, it is still desirable, and it will bring disaster to ignore it and replace it with imaginative "artificial design", because human's rationality is limited, it is better to let the flow take its course. as well. Clearly, the Burke-Hayek problem was defending ("conservative") liberty, not establishing it. Hayek's reminder that "rational conceit" leads to "the road to servitude" presupposes that people are not enslaved. So his whole job is to tell us what we can't do or we'll lose our freedom. But he does not say: what should we do in order to obtain freedoms that we do not have. He just said that the "road to slavery" is often impossible, but he does not tell us where the "road to freedom" is? Where to look for "getting out of the road of slavery"? We know from Hayek that freedom is desirable, but the question is: how can freedom be obtained?

Hayek's theory is extremely meaningful in two situations: the first is when one is enslaved without knowing it, or even still intoxicated by fantasies. As in the frenzy of the "Cultural Revolution", if we could read Hayek's book ("The Road to Serfdom" had an internal "greybook" translation at that time, and indeed a few people did), perhaps don't do stupid things. The second situation is that they are already living in a liberal order and are self-sufficient, and they always want to go out of their way to pursue more "advanced" and "perfect" ideals. This refers to the old and new leftists in Europe. Of course, they are not convinced by Hayek's criticism, but their debate with Hayek is finally about "real problems" (unlike in other places where there is no "liberal order", the "New Left" To be anti-Hayek is to play with "pseudo-questions"). And if people accept Hayek's point of view and realize that the liberal order is still desirable despite its drawbacks, and it is the system with the fewest drawbacks that people can establish, then this order can be stable and enduring.

But in two other cases, Hayek's theory makes little sense (not that he is wrong). One is that people are already in a liberal order but are very self-sufficient, and have no strong "conceit" to change the status quo. This is the case in the United States, which lacks a socialist movement, which, as Lipset put it, has neither a Labour Party nor a Conservative Party, neither socialism nor "European conservatism." The second is that he is enslaved and he knows himself, and freedom is desirable but not available. In this case, what can Hayek tell us?

The requirements of "negative liberalism" for human reason (including two aspects of reason, namely virtue and intelligence) are extremely low-key and "realistic". "Planned economy" requires profound "science" to provide artificial "optimal solutions" for dynamic economic equations, while free economy only requires people not to steal or rob, and fair trade will "go with the flow"; "ideal politics" requires people They are all sages, and free politics only requires people not to commit crimes or violate the rights of others. It should be said that these requirements are much better than the "new socialist", so people used to think that "privatization" is easier to do than public ownership, and that a market economy is easier to achieve than a "planned economy".

However, in the Eastern European countries when the Soviet army entered, the "nationalization" was realized with one order, but the privatization after the drastic changes was delayed for a long time, with twists and turns, so that there were "two unexpected" exclamations - "GCD collapsed so much. It’s easy, even the opposition didn’t think about it; privatization is so difficult, even the GCD didn’t think about it.” In China, it took only seven years from the victory of the revolution in 1949 to the completion of the socialist transformation in 1956, and the reform to the market economy It has been more than 20 years, and there is still no end in sight! Anyone who is a little more sensible knows that it is not idealistic romantic passions that hinder reform today, but realistic relationships.

For the Chinese who lack religious tradition, it is not difficult to "give up utopia", but it is very difficult to get rid of coercion. Because for some people, coercion brings great benefits to themselves, while for many people, resistance to coercion brings great danger. Hayek's theory is successful as a defense of the liberal order, and valid as an explanation for some societies that have fallen from the liberal order to a state of "slavery". However, this theory may not be successful as a theory for establishing a free order, and it may not be effective to use it to explain the history and reality of a society in which there has never been a free order.

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Vico wanted to understand the nature of historical knowledge and of history itself: to study the outside world we must rely on natural science, but all natural science can provide us is the record of the behaviour of objects such as stones, tables, stars, molecules, and the like. And when we think about history, we go beyond this mechanical movement, we want to understand how human beings live, and that means understanding their motivations, their fears, hopes, ambitions, likes and dislikes - to whom do they turn Pray, how they express themselves in poetry, art, religion.

We can do this because we are human beings ourselves, and on these occasions we are understanding our inner life. We know how a stone, or a table moves, because we observe it, formulate hypotheses, and test it; but we don't know why the stone wants to be the way it is - in fact we think that the stone can't have a desire, can't have any awareness. But we do know why we are what we are, what we seek, what frustrates us, and how to express our innermost feelings and beliefs; we know more about ourselves than we can about rocks or streams.

The German philosopher and poet Johann Gottfried Herder was not the first to rise up against the ideas of the French at the time (his teacher, Johann Georg Hamann, deserves the honor). These French philosophers believed that there are universal, timeless, unquestionable truths held by all people in all times and all places, and that differences are entirely attributable to mistakes or illusions, because truth is unique and universal . (quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus creditum est) Herder believes that different cultures will give different answers to their big questions. Compared with the outside world, he was more interested in the humanities and spiritual life, and he became convinced that the truth in the eyes of the Portuguese was not necessarily the truth in the heart of the Persians.

Herder argues that every culture has its own "centre of gravity"; every culture has its own point of reference; there is no reason why different cultures compete with each other, and there must be Universal tolerance, and unification leads to destruction. There is nothing worse than imperialism. It was a crime for Rome to destroy the local civilization in Asia Minor in order to build a unified Roman culture. The world is a big garden in which a hundred flowers bloom and trees grow together, each with its own way, with its own qualifications and rights, past and future. The corollary from this is that no matter how much people have in common—and of course there must be some degree of common human nature—there is no universal right answer that is as valid for one culture as it is for another. Ideals are not objective truths written in heaven that must be understood, imitated, and practiced; rather, they are created by man. Value is not found, but made, not found, but generated.

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To the Byronic Romantics, "I" is indeed a person, an outsider, an explorer, the outlaw who openly challenges society and its accepted values and follows his own path. whatever your heart desires. This may be his destiny, but it's also better than being cookie-cutter and being controlled by mediocrity. For other thinkers, however, "I" is something more metaphysical. It belongs to some collective: nation, church, party, class, a edifice I am just a stone on it, or an organization, I am only a trivial component of it.

It is the creator, and it is vital to me that I belong to this movement, race, nation, class, church; I do not conceive of myself as a concrete entity in this superman, my life has been organically integrated with it. This is German nationalism: I don't do it because it's good or right or because I like it; I only do it because I'm German, it's the German way of life. The same is true of modern existentialism, which I do because I invest myself in this form of existence. Nothing shapes me, and I don't do something because it's an objective order I obey or a general rule I must adhere to; I do something only because I create my own as if I wanted to. Life; I myself want to be what I am, I give it direction, I am responsible for it.

Denying universal values, emphasizing that man is first and foremost an integral part of a super-self and loyal to that super-self is a rather dangerous trend in European history that has led to great destruction and catastrophe in modern history . The time has come for a political reflection on the theory of early German Romanticism and its disciples in places like France. Super-egos concepts such as "without me there is only the party", "without me there is only the church", and "the state, right or wrong, is the state" and slogans have cut wounds on the core beliefs of human thought (which A belief as stated above: truth is universal, eternal, applicable to all people in all ages) and never recovered.

I think the value of the Nazis is abhorrent, but I can still understand it, given that the information is greatly distorted and people have false beliefs about reality, then surely people will believe that they are the only salvation. I can understand that as long as you are sufficiently miseducated, influenced by widespread fantasies or mistakes, people, though still human, will believe them and commit unspeakable crimes.

Pluralism is not relativism. Diverse values are objective and are the essence of human nature rather than the arbitrary construction of people's subjective imagination. The enemy of pluralism is monism: an ancient belief. Monism holds that there is some single perfect truth, and if it is truly the truth, it must ultimately apply to everything. The result of this belief (which is a little different from what Popper calls essentialism, but very similar to what Popper sees as the root of all evil) is that those who possess this truth will rule over all who do not possess it people. One must obey those who know the answers to some of the fundamental questions facing humanity, because only they know how society should be organized, how society should live, and how culture should grow.

This is the old Plato belief in the Philosopher King, who is qualified to give orders to others. There have always been some thinkers who have argued that the world would make great progress if scientists or scientifically trained people were solely responsible. In this regard, I have to say that there is no excuse or reason better than this to justify the elite depriving the vast majority of their fundamental freedoms and exercising an unfettered autocracy.

I realize that there is a difference between negative freedom and positive freedom, and that they are answers to two different questions; but, although they come from the same source, they are not, in my opinion, opposites, and the answer to one question may not necessarily be Decide on an answer to another question. Both freedoms are the ultimate goals of human beings, both are necessarily limited, and both concepts have been distorted in the course of human history.

Negative liberty has been interpreted as economic laissez-faire, under the banner of which property owners can destroy the lives of children in mines and factory owners can destroy the health and character of factory workers. But it seems to me that this is just a distortion, not the basic meaning of the concept for humans. Likewise, it is said to be taunting to tell a poor man that he has complete freedom to occupy a room in a luxury hotel and that he has no ability to pay at all. However, this just confuses black and white.

He does have the freedom to rent a room there, but he lacks the means to exercise that freedom. He has no such means, perhaps because he is hindered by an artificial economic system from earning a higher income than he now earns; but this is a deprivation of the liberty to obtain income, not the liberty of not having a room. This distinction may be pedantic, but it is the key to discussing the relationship between economic and political freedom.