SOURCE: “The Twentieth Century: The Limits of Liberal Political Philosophy,” in An Uncertain Legacy: Essays on the Pursuit of Liberty, edited by Edward B. McLean, The Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 1997, pp. 193-224.

In the following essay, Gray criticizes Hayek for constructing a philosophical system that is too dependent on the logic of economic exchange in explaining all kinds of human interaction.

In Friederich August von Hayek's work we find one of the most ambitious attempts we possess thus far to develop a comprehensive liberal political philosophy. Unlike the fashionable liberalisms which take their cues from Rawls, Hayek's is noteworthy in making plain its dependency on a particular philosophy of history and on the results of economic theory. In a way that is only comparable with the liberalism of J. S. Mill, Hayek's liberalism expresses an entire, if not always an entirely coherent world view—a fact which goes far...