FA Hayek’s final work, The Fatal Conceit (1988), is in essence a lengthy argument against what its author calls ‘constructivist rationalism’. By that term he means the assumption that cultural evolution occurs not by a process of natural selection as in biological evolution, but instead as the result of deliberate design guided by human reason (p. 22). In the constructivist framework, societal, economic, and political institutions are assumed to have developed as the result of a guiding mind or minds. Such a view, Hayek argues, smacks of a fatal conceit.
Throughout the above mentioned work, Hayek demonstrates that in many areas, the constructivist assumptions are not warranted, and that the existence of various social institutions can be understood as resulting from the interplay of acting individuals without a single guiding force – that is, as a result of human action, but not of human design. He refers to such emergence as spontaneous, and this process can be particularly understood in regard to the development of languages and economies. In his discussion of the fatal conceit, Hayek recognises that a great deal of the constructivist-rationalist view on political economy owes much to the work of ancient philosophers Plato (424/423 – 348/347 BCE) and Aristotle (384 – 322 BCE):
“The unsatisfactory character of our contemporary vocabulary of political terms results from its descent largely from Plato and Aristotle who, lacking the conception of evolution, considered the order of human affairs as an arrangement of a fixed and unchanging number of men fully known to the governing authority – or, like most religions down to socialism, as the designed product of some superior mind.” (p. 109)
In this he recognises a particular strand of Platonic-Aristotelian rationalism, which was not necessarily universal in Greek thought (p. 46). It was this strand, however, that was to become the most influential one in Western philosophy from the time of the Scholastic movement in the Middle Ages. Expanding on Hayek’s work, it must be realised that this constructivist-rationalist view extends to the very root of Western philosophy in the works of Plato, and goes far deeper than questions of political economy.
It is well-known that in the Republic and in the Laws, Plato sets himself the task of rationally describing the ideal city and law-code respectively. Those works indeed present a rationalist, constructivist understanding of societal institutions, but they are only the tip of the iceberg. The fact of the matter is that the fatal conceit extends throughout Plato’s work, from the earliest Socratic dialogues to the fully developed theory of the Forms. Not only that, but it is clear that the fatal conceit is the major difficulty with which Plato grapples, and his inability to grant significance to spontaneous, rather than planned, developments is at the heart of the failure of his philosophical and political systems both.
Many of Plato’s dialogues are concerned with the proper definition of a particular concept, for example moderation (in the Charmides), courage (Laches), friendship (Lysis), piety (Euthyphro), love (Symposium), knowledge (Theaetatus), beauty (Hippias Major), and even virtue overall (Meno). The concept of ‘the good’ appears in many dialogues (e.g. in the Gorgias and the Republic). Each of these words is taken as the starting point for a rational inquiry into the true meanings signified by them, which often leads, through the Socratic method of questioning, to the exposure of contradictions in definitions. From that point, a more correct, non-contradictory definition of the word is sought.
Now the assumption implicit in such a task is that, because the existence of two contradictory statements forces us to see that at least one of them is false, in the same way the existence of two definitions that have contradictory inferences requires us to understand that at least one of them must be false, and that therefore the true definition of the word is yet to be apprehended. A further, and even more central, assumption of such a task is that each word does indeed have a correct definition. Why would Plato hold to such assumptions? In order to expose Plato’s view on this, we must look more closely at his views on the origins of language.
In the Cratylus, Plato turns his attention to the development of language and the origins of words, through a dialogue between Socrates, Hermogenes, and Cratylus. At the beginning of the dialogue, Hermogenes suggests to Socrates that the particular words of a language exist by custom and convention rather than by design. Socrates answers him by way of analogy with activities apart from naming:
“In cutting, for example, we do not cut as we please, and with any chance instrument; but we cut with the proper instrument only, and according to the natural process of cutting; and the natural process is right and will succeed, but any other will fail and be of no use at all.”
Now – according to Plato – since there is a proper way of cutting, as performed by the carpenter, so too must there be a proper way of naming, as performed, he assumes, by the legislator:
“Soc. Cannot you at least say who gives us the names which we use?
Her. Indeed I cannot.
Soc. Does not the law seem to you to give us them?
Her. Yes, I suppose so.
Soc. Then the teacher, when he gives us a name, uses the work of the legislator?
Her. I agree.”
“Soc. Then, Hermogenes, not every man is able to give a name, but only a maker of names; and this is the legislator, who of all skilled artisans in the world is the rarest.”
“Soc. Names, then, are given in order to instruct?
Soc. And naming is an art, and has artificers?
Soc. And who are they?
Crat. The legislators, of whom you spoke at first.”
The claim that language exists as a result of the development of customs or conventions, i.e. as a result of spontaneous order, is simply waved away by the assumption that words must have come about as a result of rational legislation. Indeed, much of the rest of the dialogue is a reconstruction by Plato of the origins of various Greek words, with the assumption that there is a rational thread running through the language (suffice it to say that it is mostly an exercise in false etymology). That Plato had such an upside-down view of the development of words, around whose definitions most of his works are framed, shows how large the fatal conceit looms in the works of Plato, the cornerstone of Western philosophy.
Plato’s fatal conceit, however, extends beyond his conception of language and definitions, as well as his political philosophy, into his fully developed theory of Forms. This is because the Forms themselves are based directly on his understanding of definitions, which he assumes must have a correct, rational, non-contradictory essence. For not only must those abstract concepts discussed in his dialogues truly exist, but so too must all concepts, and these true essences are the Forms. The concept of ‘table’ is not bound by custom and experience, but is in fact a reflection of the true, rationally understood, essence of ‘table’. The assumptions of the fatal conceit force Plato to such ridiculous bounds of logic, which themselves appear as an unintended but grand reductio ad absurdum. Ironically it is Plato himself who sees that there are logical contradictions even in his own rationally constructed theory of the Forms, which he presents to us in the first part of the Parmenides: though his striking constructivism could not be quelled by Hermogenes’ humble claims of spontaneous order, Plato at last finds that even that constructivist rationalism is defeated by its own logic.
I have shown in this brief essay that Hayek’s concept of the fatal conceit is in fact the very same lens through which Plato, the father of Western philosophy, viewed the world. That the fatal conceit exists at the foundation of Western philosophy is of no little importance. Not only is Plato still the most widely read of the ancient philosophers, but his influence strongly permeates both modern and contemporary philosophy. The overestimation of constructivist rationalism and the underestimation of spontaneous order is one of the most destructive trends in modern society and is key in the continued calls for further centralization of power in the state. That we can recognise these intellectual origins of that approach allows us to understand the opposite concept of spontaneous order even more fully, and beyond the bounds of political economy.