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영어

In this paper, we have given an account of the central arguments of Hayek's theory of spontaneous social order. They can be summarized as follows. Social order is not brought about by human design and concerted agreement; rather, it emerges spontaneously, as the unintended outcome of the actions of many individuals who are separately pursuing their goals.
In market order, co-ordination is endogenously achieved by a constant readjustment of individual plans in the light of new information encoded in the price system. In contrast with planned economies, market orders are better able to deal with the epistemic problem faced by society: by relying on decentralized decision-making, market orders bring about a more efficient use of economic resources and thus general prosperity. In addition to their epistemic function, market orders produce a moral end: by allowing men to pursue their individual plans free from interference by others, they bring about a maximum degree of individual liberty.
Hayek's theory of spontaneous order provides a scientific explanation of how social order is brought about in the absence of human design. We have argued that, as the expression twin ideas of evolution and the spontaneous formation of an order indicates, Hayek combines two types of explanation: (1) an invisible hand explanation, according to which market order is not brought about by design, or collective agreement, but as the unintended consequence of the actions of many individuals separately pursuing their goals; and (2) a theory of cultural evolution of rules which provide the mechanism for the spontaneous formation of social order. For Hayek, cultural evolution is a process which occurs independently of human reason: rules are not selected because individuals understand their functions; rather, practices which had first been adopted for other reasons, or even purely accidentally, were preserved because they enabled the group in which they had arisen to prevail over others. In this dissertation, we have questioned Hayek's pronouncements on the intellectual roots of his theory of spontaneous order.