Abstract
The concept of freedom is one of the central issues in philosophy and politics. In the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, the concept that prevailed in the mainstream was largely defined according to the principles of the ‘free’ market economy. This chapter focuses on the concept of freedom as formulated by Friedrich von Hayek and Milton Friedman, which was largely derived from the neoclassical economic approach. The key component of their respective concepts of freedom was labelled negative freedom (or ‘freedom from’) by Sir Isaiah Berlin in his Four Essays on Liberty. While defended a limited state role in securing freedom and the private spheres of individuals, Hayek did not condemn the human rights abuses or coercive practices carried out during General Pinochet brutal dictatorship. Both Friedman and Hayek formulated conceptions of freedom that primarily revolve around the concepts of economic freedom and negative freedom. Advocates of positive freedom viewed distributive justice as an important concept in creating the conditions required for positive freedom. The respective ideas of freedom formulated by Friedman and Hayek only attained the level of abstract freedom—a minimalist form. Their advocacy of applying the ‘free’ market economic approach to different branches of social and political life has produced many catastrophic outcomes, including the exploitation of natural resources and human beings, the degradation and pollution of the environment, economic crises and war. The period that witnessed the most significant application of the ideas of ‘free’ market capitalism in the concept of freedom represents a regression in the development of self-understanding and self-realization. Friedman and Hayek’s ideas pertaining to freedom should, therefore, be discarded from political, economic, social and philosophical discourse and debates, because this minimal form of freedom promotes freedom for modern elites while delivering unfreedom for the rest.
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Filip, B. (2018). Friedman and Hayek’s Converging Ideas on Freedom and the State. In: Leeson, R. (eds) Hayek: A Collaborative Biography. Archival Insights into the Evolution of Economics. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95219-2_10
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