Friedrich August von Hayek
From wikireligiosus
Friedrich August von Hayek (8 May 1899 to 23 March 1992), was an Austrian and British economist and philosopher known for his intensive interest in evolution and biology and his lifelong defense of classical liberalism against nationalist, socialist and rationalist ideas of preplanning complex interactions. He grew up in Austria, vowed to struggle for a peaceful world after having fought in World War I, escaped from the national socialists to Great Britain (becoming a British subject in 1938), taught in the United States and finally took a post at Freiburg University, Germany. Hayek is considered by some to be one of the most important economists and political philosophers of the twentieth century, earning a nobel prize in economics in 1974 and the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1991. After a short period of intensive catholicism in his youth, Hayek deemed himself an agnostic, defending religious freedom as a central pillar of liberty as choosing one's own values and ends in life beyond political or rational planning.
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Evolutionary Theory of Religion
In 1982 at Keßheim Castle, Hayek expanded a lecture titled Die überschätzte Vernunft (engl. The overrated reason). Therein, he sketched an explicit theory about the biocultural evolution of religiosity and religions, proposing it bestowing a reproductive advantage, not as an "intrinsic, but historic" effect: Those religious traditions espousing successful communal and family life would spread throughout the generations, constantly competing and adapting to changing environments. And as humans left their ancestral environments of small-group cooperation and had to fit into extended orders of increasingly anonymous, complex interactions, their dependence on religious orientation and surveillance actually increased.
Therefore, Hayek assumed that humanity owed its cultural development to the acceptance of religious mythologies as i.e. supernatural agents which were not verifiable by the senses or sciences, but accepted as beliefs. They brought forth social systems of spontaneous order, "which is the result of human action but not of human design". Some of these traditions bestowed groups with successful orientations towards “multiplying and subjugating the earth”, linking biological and cultural evolution (cp. reproductive advantage). Only those religions preaching property rights and the belief in family survived the “natural selection of religions”, while thousands of other religions succumbed to it. Therefore, according to Hayek, all major, monotheistic as well as Eastern religions today firmly support property rights and the idea of family, whereas movements fighting these institutions broke down repeatedly.
Religion and the Guardians of Tradition
Sharpening these early thoughts on ethnologist observations and hypotheses especially by Bronislaw Malinowski and James Frazer in the upcoming years, Hayek finished the last chapter of his last book The Fatal Conceit as a sketch of comprehensive, evolutionary theory of religion.
The chapter was titled Religion and the Guardians of Tradition and included an Appendix, which referred to James Frazer and called for interdisciplinary studies on the evolution of religion. It expanded the Keßheim-lecture with explicit hypotheses:
- 1. supernatural agents are construed on the basis of neuronal animism (via David Hume)
- 2. they are believed to observe and to judge behaviors, thereby functioning as guardians of successful traditions. (cp. supernatural punishment or supernatural involvement
- 3. religious behaviors (as i.e. rituals) and symbols (as i.e. creeds or signs) are signalling shared beliefs about these supernatural agents, thereby building trust and cooperation. (cp. cooperative signalling)
- 4. the traditions and benefits are organized in groups (cp. group selection), which have to stand competition (cp. cultural evolution)
Although empirical science had to stay agnostic regarding the truth of central religious mythologies, those most successful could be perceived as symbolic truths, "at least as a gesture of appreciation". (Hayek 1988, p. 137)
Tests & Reactions
Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks held the memorial lecture "Morals and Markets" on the basis of “Religion and the Guardians of Tradition”, acknowledging its viability from the perspective of Jewish religious tradition. He turned again to the topic of religious demography and reproductive advantage in his Theos-lecture 2009, which sparked a lively debate.
David Sloan Wilson applauded Hayek's inclusion of group selection in his Darwin's Cathedral in 2002.
Rüdiger Vaas and Michael Blume verified the reproductive advantages in international and Swiss census data as well as case studies i.e. about the Amish in their Gott, Gene und Gehirn in 2009.
Literature
- Blume, Michael (2009). The Reproductive Benefits of Religious Affiliation, in: Voland, E.; Schiefenhövel, W.: The Biological Evolution of Religious Mind and Behavior, Springer Frontier Collection 2009
- Hayek, Friedrich & Kerber, W. (1996). Die Anmaßung von Wissen, Mohr Siebeck 1996 (includes the Keßheim-lecture in German)
- Hayek, Friedrich (1988). The Fatal Conceit (includes Religion and the Guardians of Tradition, and Appendices)
- Sacks, Jonathan (1999). Morals and Markets: Seventh Annual Iea Hayek Memorial Lecture, IEA 1999
- Vaas, Rüdiger & Blume, M. (2009). Gott, Gene und Gehirn. Warum Glaube nützt. Zur Evolution der Religiosität.', Hirzel 2009
- Vanberg, V. (2001). Hayek, Friedrich A von (1899–1992), International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, pp. 6482–6486. Abstract.
Blog Posts
- Hayek — Religion, Agnosticism, Support of Civilization, in: Explorers Foundation, February 2007
- Homo religiosus. The natural history of religion, in: Scilog "Biology of Religion", May 2009
