Self-determination as oppression: freedom and spontaneous order in F. A. Hayek

Abstract

The modern or negative conception of freedom is usually seen as one of the defining characteristics of the liberal tradition. In this paper, I intend to contrast Benjamin Constant's modern conception of freedom against Isaiah Berlin's and Friedrich Hayek's conceptions of negative freedom. I defend the thesis that not only is there no continuity between them, there is also a reversal on a crucial point: if for Constant modern freedom lacks civic participation in a self-determining community, for Hayek such a possibility of self-determination is the very source of the risk of oppression, so that there is no necessary or possible link between freedom and representative government. In doing so, I argue that Hayek offers two distinct conceptions of freedom, one negative (freedom as the absence of coercion) and one anti-positive (freedom as the absence of self-determination).