Tracing the “true liberalism”: F. A. Hayek as a reader of Tocqueville

The forthcoming article “Tracing the “true liberalism”: F. A. Hayek as a reader of Tocqueville” by Gianna Englert is summarized by the author below.

Today’s headlines warn of a global “crisis of liberalism”: the realization that free governments are under threat, and that their foundational liberal philosophies – including appeals to individual freedom, civil rights, and constitutional protections – cannot protect them. So impoverished is liberalism, we now hear, that we ought to envision a “post-liberal” politics of the future, free from the commitments to individualism and limited government that have unraveled liberalism from within. But not everyone aspires to move beyond liberalism. Scholars are also actively investigating the tradition’s past, aiming to illuminate current dilemmas with insights from liberals’ history and the figures who helped to shape it.

This article explores an earlier description of liberalism by the Nobel economist F.A. Hayek (1899–1992), who likewise used history to fortify liberal theory. It investigates Hayek’s renderings of Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859) as an exemplar of “true liberalism” against its “false” variant. This article reveals how Hayek deployed Tocqueville to navigate a parallel moment of liberal crisis in response to the collectivist philosophies of the mid-twentieth century.

But why did Hayek turn to Tocqueville, the famed observer of nineteenth-century America, to resolve the political crises of twentieth-century Europe? Hayek interpreted his French predecessor as the heir to a tradition of liberal individualism that originated in seventeenth-century Britain. This original liberal philosophy was epistemic and social. It began with the assumption that human reason is limited and imperfect – so much so that any attempts at “top-down” social planning are destined to fail. For Hayek, Tocqueville was remarkable for upholding this philosophy after the French Revolution, when true liberalism was eclipsed by the “false” Continental rationalism of Henri de Saint-Simon. Through his interpretations of Tocqueville, Hayek narrated a story of liberal decline but also of optimism. Developed by Locke and Mandeville, adapted by Smith and Hume, and later “perfected” – to use Hayek’s term – by Tocqueville, true liberalism offered a compelling counterweight to the rationalist ideas that supported totalitarianism in Hayek’s own time.

This study of Hayek’s Tocqueville resonates for us today as we look to the past for guidance or clarification in the present. Through his composite history of liberal ideas and their exemplars, Hayek recovered a forgotten definition of liberalism as an attitude of epistemic humility; he explored why moments of political uncertainty like our own often inspire a return to history; and he offered lessons (persuasive and cautionary) for writing a coherent account of the liberal tradition in illiberal times.

About the Author: Gianna Englert is an Associate Professor of Humanities in The Hamilton Center for Classical and Civic Education at the University of Florida. Their research “Tracing the “true liberalism”: F. A. Hayek as a reader of Tocqueville” is now available in Early View and will appear in a forthcoming issue of the American Journal of Political Science.