Hayek was not only a seminal thinker in his own right. As a critic, commentator, guide, and teacher of ideas in general, he was a master of the history of ideas in general. This volume collects his writings on the ideas of others, and through his commentary we learn of the depth of Hayek’s own perspective.
Here we have several important unpublished essays on the meaning of being an economist. These alone are priceless contributions. But also we have essays on Francis Bacon, Bernard Mandeville, David Hume, Adam Smith, Richard Cantillon, Frederic Bastiat, Jules Dupuit, Heinrich Gossen, and several extended and detailed essays on all the major thinkers of the 19th century English debate between the Currency and Banking School.
Of all the books in the collected works, it is likely that this one contains the largest amount of inaccessible, unpublished, and previously untranslated work. In this sense, the book is full of surprises.
F. A. Hayek (1899–1992) is undoubtedly the most eminent of the modern Austrian economists, and a founding board member of the Mises Institute. Student of Friedrich von Wieser, protégé and colleague of Ludwig von Mises, and foremost representative of an outstanding generation of Austrian School theorists, Hayek was more successful than anyone else in spreading Austrian ideas throughout the English-speaking world. He shared the 1974 Nobel Prize in Economics with ideological rival Gunnar Myrdal ”for their pioneering work in the theory of money and economic fluctuations and for their penetrating analysis of the interdependence of economic, social and institutional phenomena.” Among mainstream economists, he is mainly known for his popular The Road to Serfdom (1944).
