ABSTRACT
A thinker who can earn praise and condemnation in such proximity and from such a committed critic must command attention. What sort of book is The Constitution of Liberty ?t Its wide sweep takes in economics, political theory, philosophy, sociology, anthropology and jurisprudence. Its profound scholarship, drawing on or appraising more than a thousand authors, yields an intellectual feast and tour de force. Its modesty, humility and humanity inspire respect for a writer whose transparent aim, whatever his judgments, is solely to serve mankind. Its fearless integrity leads him to follow through his analysis to unpopular and seemingly extravagant conclusions. Not least, its aim, 'a comprehensive restatement of the basic principles of a philosophy of freedom' (p. 3) makes it a work that will live as a landmark in the history of political economy. Like Lord Robbins's work on the English classical economists, t it takes us back to the masters of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, not least to Hayek's mentors, David Hume, Adam Smith, Edmund Burke, Lord Acton, Alexis de Tocqueville, whom we are too apt to judge secondhand from writers who have misinterpreted them. It would
* The New York Times Book Review, 21st February, 1960. t Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1960. :j: The Theory of Economic Policy, Macmillan, 1952.
