Rand Vs. Hayek On Abstraction - Summer Seminar 2010 Video

Speaker:  David Kelley

Ayn Rand and Friedrich Hayek were notable 20th century advocates of capitalism, and both of them based their political views, in part, on theories in epistemology. David Kelley will discuss the radical difference in their views on a core epistemological issue, the nature of abstractions. Rand held that we form abstractions from the observation of particular, concrete things. Hayek held the opposite view that abstractions are primary; some are innate, some acquired from our cultural environment, but neither can be independently supported by observation of concretes. Kelley will show why Hayek’s view is both false and inconsistent with a fully individualist moral and political theory.

Duration: 00:58:22

This talk is downloadable as an MP4 Video.