I apologize for skipping a week, but I had technical problems.

A few days ago Kevin Vallier (a PhD student at Arizona) sent my his concluding blog discussion of Jerry Gaus' (2011) book The Order of Public Reason: A Theory of Freedom and Morality in a Diverse and Bounded World (Cambridge). The discussion calls attention to all kinds of interesting issues (see especially the treatment of Michael Gill's anti-monism).

But one passage in the blog caught my critical attention: "Jerry [Gaus] says, “Our reason did not produce social order - we did not reason ourselves into being followers of social rules. Rather, the requirements of social order shaped our reason.” This just is Hayek, who wrote: "Man is as much a rule-following animal as a purpose-seeking one. And he is successful not because he knows why he ought to observe the rules which he does observe, or is even capable of stating all these rules in words, but because his thinking and acting are governed by rules which have by a process of selection been evolved in a society in which he lives, and which are thus the product of the experience of generations (LLL, 11)."

Now, I agree that requirements of social order shaped our reason. I also agree with Hayek that man is, in part, a rule-following animal. (Here Hayek reminds us how much he and his cousin Wittgenstein were Weberian in outlook!) But the Hayek quote goes well beyond Gaus' (more limited) point. In fact, the passage from Hayek reminds me of the crucial reason why I am not a Hayekian (to echo a famous essay by Hayek). (What I am about to say is no criticism of Vallier or Gaus, although Vallier may disagree.) For Hayek's passage obscures something crucial. I have in mind the claim, "which have by a process of selection been evolved in a society in which he lives..." This language makes the process of selection sound all very neutral--as something extrinsic. And, of course, the inference, "thus," is by no means obvious (or valid).

The language of "process", of course, hides a great deal of variety, and some of the variety makes a moral and political difference. It is not a matter of indifference if the rules have been selected through government by discussion (to echo Frank Knight's critique of Hayek) or have been selected by a benevolent dictator; this is not a mere technicality and may also make the Hayekian conclusion (the experience of generations) simply invalid or morally question-begging (whose experience? What was the content of that experience?)! To put this in neo-Hegelian or Adam Smithian terms: history matters, not just as the source of the given (as Hayek inclines us to submit to), but also as itself the contestable terrain. Hayekian though is here, shall we say, not at its most sensitive. (This is not an idle matter because Hayek's thought flirts a bit too easily with the benevolent dictator model.)

To put this in terms that I derive from my reading of Adam Smith. History matters because when we articulate the process by which our institutions are formed we will learn something not just about (what I call) the social conditions of our possibilities, but also something about the moral character of these institions. If we treat these as given, our so-called "experience" will be too limited.