ABSTRACT
I have suggested that Hayek, originally concerned to improve a world which gives rise to profound dissatisfaction, was led, through his encounter with Mises, to espouse a form of classical liberalism. This, he argued, would provide a better path than would socialism to the realization of his ideals. Now, one important theme in Hayek’s liberalism is the ideal of equality before the law, that, in constitutional or procedural terms, individuals should be treated as ends in themselves. Such an ideal makes its appearance in freedom and the Economic System and in The Road to Serfdom. But it is in Hayek’s Constitution of Liberty that it appears in a full-fledged form. Indeed, John Gray, when discussing Hayek’s work, while he noted the ‘fundamental utilitarian commitment in [Hayek’s] theory of morality’1 also said that Hayek has always been an ethical Kantian and that:
What is distinctive in Hayek’s Kantian ethics is his insight that the demands of justice need not be competitive with the claims of general welfare: rather, a framework of justice is an indispensable condition of the successful achievement of general welfare.2
