ABSTRACT
The well-spring of all Hayek's work in social philosophy and in economic theory is, then, a conception of human knowledge. Hayek's thought also bears the imprint of the Viennese critics of language: of Karl Kraus, of the now almost forgotten Fritz Mauthner, and of Hayek's half-cousin, Ludwig Wittgenstein. The thesis of the primacy of practice leads Hayek to refine the argument that rational resource-allocation under socialism is impossible an argument which Hayek inherited from his colleague L. von Mises. Conservatives often invoke this and other evidence in support of a picture of Hayek as a doctrinaire defender of liberty, whose general outlook is little different from that of Nozick, or a partisan of laisser-faire such as Milton Friedman. In his writings on Mandeville, Hayek has made clear that the defence of the market economy may demand a far from conservative revision of ordinary morality.
