ABSTRACT
The University of Chicago is unique among US universities in having produced a genuine “school” of economists. The perfect market not only achieves efficiency in the use of resources, but also realizes one kind of justice in the distribution of the product, what Knight calls “commutative” justice, the exchange of equal values, so that each party takes out, in value equivalent, what he puts in. A free society allows full participation of its members in the activities of making and changing the law. The ability to give up one’s citizenship in a modern state and join another state or form a new one is sharply limited; therefore, all states must employ coercion in forcing some citizens to obey the law. The key concepts in Knight’s social philosophy are pluralism and the related idea of emergent evolution. Instrumental rationality is held to be “inherently individualistic” and even presocial.
