Friedrich August von Hayek and the Mirage of Social Justice

Abstract

This chapter will apply Mario Bunge’s systemism to the notion of social justice. The key idea argued here is that, while society is a system, whose composition consists of individuals who have and pursue values, to claim “society”itself has values is to endorse a holistic metaphysics. Social justice is an emergent property of a social system and not a property of individuals living outside of society; it will be an ontologically viable concept only if it can be shown to arise from individual values and not float independently above them.