Cognitive Autonomy and Epistemology of Action in Hayek’s and Merleau-Ponty’s Thought

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the similarities between two books: Hayek’s The Sensory Order (published in 1952, but with a first draft developed in the ‘20s) and Merleau-Ponty’s The Structure of Behaviour (released in 1942). These books share an original standpoint. They criticize the assumptions of sociological holism on the basis of the idea that the mind is both an interpretative device and a self-organized system. As thinkers, Hayek and Merleau-Ponty are of ten considered quite distant from each other. However, unlike Merleau-Ponty — who died many years before him — Hayek explicitly acknowledges the existence of analogies between his conception of mind and that of the French author. In a footnote of the New Studies he underlines that his theory of the “primacy of the abstract” is “very similar” to Merleau-Ponty’s idea of “the primacy of perception” (1978, p. 38).

• As is well known, the “chief interest behind Merleau-Ponty’s thought … was the phenomenology that emerged in Germany in the early decades of the twenty century” (Carman & Hansen 2005, p. 5). Founded by Edmund Husserl, phenomenology is a philosophical approach focusing on the nature of consciousness and notably on its intuitive and interpretative presuppositions. As Madison (1994, p. 38 ff.) remarks, in spite of the fact that Hayek cannot be considered a direct follower of Husserl, he shares, along with others members of the Austrian school, phenomenology’s dislike for scientistic objectivism. This point has been underlined by Udhen as well (2001, pp. 63, 140). Moreover, according to Udhen (pp. 114, 124), Hayek’s methodological individualism was significantly influenced by the phenomenological sociology of Alfred Schutz, a follower of both Mises and Husserl (see also Cubeddu 1997; Smith 1996).