(Voor Sowell over de constrained vision:https://theindependentwhig.com/haidt-passages/sowell-constrained-and-unconstrained-visions/sowell-the-constrained-vision/)
(Voor Sowell over de unconstrained vision: https://theindependentwhig.com/haidt-passages/sowell-constrained-and-unconstrained-visions/sowell-the-unconstrained-vision/ )
Onderstaand schema maakt met name het onderscheid tussen rationalisme en opvatting van sociale evolutie als fundamentele kenmerken. Dit brengt wellicht meer klaarheid (1). Velen associëren de "Verlichting" louter met de Franse. Het is essentieel deze echter te vergelijken met andere tradities.
De Franse Verlichting versus de "Britse/Schotse traditie"
Hayek: "What we have
called the “British tradition” was made explicit mainly by a group of
Scottish moral philosophers led by David Hume, Adam Smith and Adam
Ferguson, seconded by their English contemporaries Josiah Tucker, Edmund
Burke, and William Paley, and drawing largely on a tradition rooted in
the jurisprudence of the common law. Opposed to them was the tradition
of the French Enlightenment, deeply imbued with Cartesian rationalism:
the Encyclopedists and Rousseau, the Physiocrats and Concordet, are
their best-known representatives. Though these
groups are now commonly lumped together as the ancestors of modern
liberalism, there is hardly a greater contrast imaginable than that
between their respective conceptions of the evolution and functioning of
a social order and the role played in it by liberty. The difference is
directly traceable to the predominance of an essentially empiricist view
of the world in England and a rationalist approach in France. The main
contrast in the practical conclusions to which these approaches has led
has recently been well put, as follows: “One finds the essence of
freedom in spontaneity and the absence of coercion, the other believes
it to be realized only in the pursuit and attainment of an absolute
collective purpose”; and “one stands for organic, slow, half-conscious
growth, the other for doctrinaire deliberateness; one for trial and
error procedure, the other for an enforced solely valid pattern."
—Friedrich Hayek, The Constitution of liberty, pp110-
Klassieke economen en founding fathers
Bij de klassieke economen was er niemand die de rationalistische positie innam. Adam Smith staat natuurlijk bekend voor zijn analyse van de spontane orde en het waarschuwen voor de overmoed van de rationalistische positie. Een van de redenen overigens waarom Edmund Burke zo'n grote bewondering had voor Smith.
Citeren we even Smith die gevat op het gevaar wijst van de illusie van de maakbaarheid van de maatschappelijke ordening:
“The man of system, on the contrary, is apt to be very wise in his own conceit; and is often so enamoured with the supposed beauty of his own ideal plan of government, that he cannot suffer the smallest deviation from any part of it. He goes on to establish it completely and in all its parts, without any regard either to the great interests, or to the strong prejudices which may oppose it.He seems to imagine that he can arrange the different members of a great society with as much ease as the hand arranges the different pieces upon a chess-board. He does not consider that the pieces upon the chess-board have no other principle of motion besides that which the hand impresses upon them; but that, in the great chess-board of human society, every single piece has a principle of motion of its own, altogether different from that which the legislature might chuse to impress upon it. If those two principles coincide and act in the same direction, the game of human society will go on easily and harmoniously, and is very likely to be happy and successful. If they are opposite or different, the game will go on miserably, and the society must be at all times in the highest degree of disorder.”
—Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, 1759
Adam Smith had ook een grote invloed op de founding fathers van de VS waar hij ondermeer James Madison inspireerde voor zijn opvattingen dat een grote republiek toch kon functioneren dankzij het federalisme. We kennen Jeffersons druk geannoteerde exemplaar van de Wealth of Nations maar deze volgde Smith niet in zijn anti-rationalistische opvattingen die deze overigens deelde met Hume, Adam Ferguson en anderen.
Jefferson zetten zich af tegenover tradities en gebruiken of zoals Hayek stelt: "Thomas Jefferson believed with a characteristic rationalist misconception—that we “ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human, and . . . suppose what they did to be beyond amendment.” ( —Friedrich Hayek, The Constitution of liberty, pp122
Nochtans veronderstelden de sociale evolutiedenkers niet per se dat vroeger mensen zomaar wijzer waren maar hun inzicht was eerder dat wat tot stand was gekomen als resultaat van het experimenteren van vele generaties meer ervaring bevat dan wat een individu kan bezitten.
John Adams las met verschrikking dat Jefferson op een moment zelf
begon te suggereren dat elke generatie zijn eigen grondwet moest
schrijven. Adams beschouwde een grondwet net als iets dat vele
generaties moest overspannen. James Madison was in tegenstelling tot Adams wel in staat om Jefferson te waarschuwen dat dergelijke ideeën een hoog ivoren torengehalte hadden.
Implicaties voor de democratie
Zowel conservatieven als liberalen die de "constrained vision" delen, gaan erg terughoudend zijn om wijsheid te zoeken in de meerderheidsregel.
Dat dit voor Hayek opgaat, maakt volgend citaat uit de "Constitution of liberty" al duidelijk:
"Majority decisions tell us what people want at the moment, but not what it would be in their interest to want if they were better informed; and, unless they could be changed by persuasion, they would be of no value. The argument for democracy presupposes that any minority opinion may become a majority one." ( —Friedrich Hayek, The Constitution of liberty, pp175-
En net daarna volgt dit met extreem hoge relevantie voor vandaag:
"It would not be necessary to stress this if it were not for the fact that it is sometimes represented as the duty of the democrat, and particularly of the democratic intellectual, to accept the views and values of the majority. True, there is the convention that the view of the majority should prevail so far as collective action is concerned, but this does not in the least mean that one should not make every effort to alter it. One may have profound respect for that convention and yet very little for the wisdom of the majority. It is only because the majority opinion will always be opposed by some that our knowledge and understanding progress. In the process by which opinion is formed,it is very probable that, by the time any view becomes a majority view, it is no longer the best view: somebody will already have advanced beyond the point which the majority have reached."
—Friedrich Hayek, The Constitution of liberty, pp175-
(1)
Hayeks opvattingen hierbij hadden grote implicaties voor zijn denken rond de economische ordening ("spontaneous order vs. planning"). Een aan te bevelen artikel in die context is zijn "The Use of Knowledge in Society": http://home.uchicago.edu/~vlima/courses/econ200/spring01/hayek.pdf
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