Hayek on religion and social evolution

Tomáš Krištofóry and Josef Šíma

Chapter 5 in Hayek’s Living Legacy in Economics, Philosophy and Policy, 2026, pp 66-89 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: After finishing his Law, Legislation, and Liberty, Hayek got interested in the relations of religion and the cultural evolution of morals. We conclude that Hayek had a more mature version of his theory of religious evolution ready in the mid-1980s; he was just short of presenting it systematically. We reconstruct it as follows: religions sanction systems of morality that support some kind of economic order. They are channels through which people use moral knowledge in society. Particular religions seek converts in ever wider societies, which nurtures a process of religion as a discovery procedure in the morals underpinning economic order. In the end, a complex catallaxy emerges that is out of reach of cognitive design. Hayek uses immanent criticism as a tool by which a religion can improve the evolutionary status of its morality; his theory is far from conservative. Examples of such criticism by Hayek are discussed herein.

Keywords: Religion; Economic Order; Cultural Evolution; Morality; Moral Knowledge; Constructivism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
ISBN: 9781035394234
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