On Friedrich August von Hayek’s Economic Neo-Liberalism

Abstract

Friedrich August von Hayek, the winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics, is one of the most important representatives of economic and social neo-liberalism, who, despite basing his economic theory on Darwin’s Theory of Evolution and on basic principles of the prime liberalism, sees the necessity of distance himself from its shape. Von Hayek postulates raising the status of the family and of tradition as the foundations of cultural progress, of moral norms in ethics, without which human activity in general would be, in his opinion, out of the question. He also proclaims himself in favor of accepting the universal legal norms worked out in the Roman law and perceives the very essence and foundation for the human culture in the Christian religion. Although his neo-liberalism considerably enriches the ideas of classical liberalism, this direction in the thought requires a further development, in order to achieve a complete economic culture that as its aim has the common good, in which both the good of God Himself is inscribed as if the ultimate reason of the Universe, and the good of human persons as the peak of the realization of man’s freedom - also in the economic aspect.