[발췌: Hayek's Constitution of Liberty] Creative Powers of A Free Civilization

출처: F. A. Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty: The Definitive Edition (University of Chicago Press, 2011)

자료: 구글도서

※ 발췌(excerpts):

Chapter 2

The Creative Powers of A Free Civilization

Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them. Operations of though are like cavalry charges in a battle─they are strictly limited in number, they require fresh horses, and must only be made at decisive moments.

─A. N. Whitehead

1. (p. 073-1) The Socratic maxim that the recognition of our ignorance is the beginning of wisdom has profound significance for our understanding of society. The first requisite for this is that we become aware of men's necessary ignorance of much that helps him to achieve his aims. Most of the advantages of social life, especially in its more advanced forms which we call "civilization," rest on the fact that the individual benefits from more knowledge than he is aware of. It might be said that civilization begins when the individual in the pursuit of his ends can make use of more knowledge than he has himself acquired and when he can transcend the boundaries of his ignorance by profiting from knowledge he does not himself possess.

(p. 073-1) This fundamental fact of man's unavoidable ignorance of much on which the working of civilization rests has received little attention. Philosophers and students of society have generally glossed it over and treated this ignorance as a minor imperfection which could be more or less disregarded. But, though discussions of moral or social problems based on the assumption of perfect knowledge may occasionally be useful as a preliminary exercise in logic, they are of little use in an attempt to explain the real world. Its problems are dominated by the "practical difficulty" that our knowledge is, in fact, very far from perfect. Perhaps it is only natural that the scientists tend to stress what we do know; but in the social field, where what we do not know is often so much more important, the effect of this tendency may be very misleading. Many of the utopian constructions are worthless because they follow the lead of the theorists in assuming that we have perfect knowledge.

(p. 074-1) It must be admitted, however, that our ignorance is a peculiarly difficult subject to discuss. ... ...

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3. (p. 078-1) When we spoke of the transmission and communication of knowledge, we meant to refer to the two aspects of the process of civilization which we have already distinguished: the transmission in time of our accumulated stock of knowledge and the communication among contemporaries of information on which they base their action. They cannot be sharply separated because the tools of communication between contemporaries are part of the cultural heritage which man constantly uses in the pursuit of his ends.

(p. 078-2) We are most familiar with this process of accumulation and transmission of knowledge in the field of science─so far as it shows both the general laws of nature and the concrete features of the world in which we live. But, although this is the most conspicuous part of our inherited stock of knowledge and the chief part of what we necessarily know, in the ordinary sense of "knowing," it is still only a part; for, besides this, we command many tools─in the widest sense of that word─which the human race has evolved and which enable us to deal with our environment. These are the results of the experience of successive generations which are handed down. And, once a more efficient tool is available, it will be used without our knowing why it is better, or even what the alternatives are.

(p. 078-3) These "tools" which man has evolved and which constitute such an important part of his adaptation to his environment include much more than material implements. They consist in a large measure of forms of conduct which he habitually follows without knowing why; they consist of what we call "traditions" and "institutions," which he uses because they are available to him as a product of cumulative growth without ever having been designed by any one mind. Man is generally ignorant not only of why he uses implements of one shape rather than of another but also of how much is dependent on his actions taking one form rather than another. He does not usually know to what extent the success of his efforts is determined by his conforming to habits of which he is not even aware. This is probably are true of civilized man as of primitive man. Concurrent with the growth of conscious knowledge there always takes places an equally important accumulation of tools in this wider sense, of tested and generally adopted ways of doing things.

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4. (p. 080-2) We have now reached the point at which the main contention of this chapter will be readily intelligible. It is that the case for individual freedom rests chiefly on the recognition of the inevitable ignorance of all of us concerning a great many of the factors on which the achievement of our ends and welfare depends. [n.10]

(p. 081-1) If there were omniscient men, if we could know not only all that affects the attainment of our present wishes but also our future wants and desires, there would be little case for liberty. And, in turn, liberty of the individual would, of course, make complete foresight impossible. Liberty is essential in order to leave room for the unforeseeable and unpredictable; we want it because we have learned to expect from it the opportunity of realizing many of our aims. It is because every individual knows so little and, in particular, because we rarely know which of us knows best that we trust the independent and competitive efforts of many to induce the emergence of what we shall want when we see it.

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※ Chapter 3, "The Common Sense of Progress", begins on page 91.