Hayek on Intellectuals
8 May 2008 at 1:31 pm Peter G. Klein 6 comments
| Peter Klein |
It’s Hayek-Klein Day, and bloggers are sharing their favorite Hayek quotes (Boudreaux, Horwitz). Here’s one of mine:
The typical intellectual . . . need not possess special knowledge of anything in particular, nor need he even be particularly intelligent, to perform his role as intermediary in the spreading of ideas. What qualifies him for his job is the wide range of subjects on which he can readily talk and write, and a position or habits through which he becomes acquainted with new ideas sooner than those to whom he addresses himself.
That’s from “The Intellectuals and Socialism,” published in 1949. (See this for an elaboration of Hayek’s argument.) Substitute “blogger” for “intellectual” and the passage could have been written today!
Entry filed under: - Klein -, Austrian Economics, Education.
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Organizations and Markets 
1.
Joe Mahoney | 8 May 2008 at 3:23 pm
Happy Birthday, Peter.
We benefit from your sharing knowledge, which is “The Nature of the Klein.”
2.
Rafe | 8 May 2008 at 6:45 pm
There is a great quote in The Counter-Revolution of Science (not at hand) along the lines that the really influential ideas at any time are those which are shared by schools of thought that are regarded as bitter enemies, so all the focus is on their differences and not the unstated ideas that they all take for granted.
It might be at the beginning of the third part.
3.
Jacob | 8 May 2008 at 10:06 pm
“The discussions of every age are filled with the issues on which its leading schools of thought differ. But the general intellectual atmosphere of the time is always determined by the views on which the opposing schools agree. They become the unspoken presuppositions of all thought, the common and unquestionangly acccepted foundations on which all discussion proceeds”.
Hayek can bring out the purple prose from time to time, that’s certain. Counter-Revolution is a truly great book.
4.
Rafe | 9 May 2008 at 1:22 am
A similar one from Whitehead:
“When you are criticizing the philosophy of an epoch, do not chiefly direct your attention to those intellectual positions which its exponents feel it necessary explicitly to defend. There will be some fundamental assumptions which adherents of all the variant systems within the epoch subconsciously
presuppose. Such assumptions appear so obvious that people do not know what they are assuming because no other way of putting things has ever occurred to them. With these assumptions a certain limited number of types of philosophical systems are possible, and this group of systems constitutes
the philosophy of an epoch” Alfred North Whitehead in “Science and the Modern World” (1925).
5.
Vedran | 10 May 2008 at 8:06 pm
Dr. Klein,
Really enjoyed the quote. I specifically like that he refers to intellectuals performing the “role as intermediary in the spreading of ideas.” I feel that there are some people in the libertarian intellectual community who encourage only the production of new knowledge. While Hayek seems to lay out here,that our job is not necessarily to be super smart and constantly be creating new ideas. But instead, we should be intermediaries in spreading ideas. Not everyone can create great new ideas, but everyone can spread them effectively.
I feel some intellectuals in the libertarian movement spend their time in areas of idea production which is not their comparative advantage while ignoring what Hayek here sees as a goal of intellectuals.
6.
Randy Westgren | 12 May 2008 at 2:49 pm
Peter’s post and the subsequent conversation should bring a tear to the eye of Ron Burt. The intermediary who brings new ideas to his/her homophilic group spans the structural hole. This form of entrepreneurship can occur in economic or social settings; the latter is the case of the Hayekian intellectual.