ABSTRACT
The discussion in this chapter suggests a novel account of Hayek’s transformation, that is, the episode during which he all but abandoned technical economics and instead decided to pursue broader questions in political and social philosophy. According to the present account, Hayek’s transformation is best seen as a return to his roots in Natural Law doctrine, and especially to its commitment to the superiority of spontaneous over artificial order. I will argue that Hayek’s opposition to socialism – understood as the attempt to replace spontaneous order with artificial order – though further strengthened by a series of current events was ultimately due to his early exposure to Natural Law doctrine. Moreover, the argumentative strategies that he employed in his post-transformation work were obviously borrowed from his predecessors in the Natural Law tradition. Hayek returned to his roots in Natural Law doctrine because he thought that doing so would be the best way both to develop a cogent and convincing critique of contemporary socialist tendencies and to describe and defend the nature of a more satisfactory social order.
