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Hayek, Bartley and Popper: Justificationism and the Abuse of Reason

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Abstract

William Warren Bartley III had three strings to his bow: original philosopher, biographer and editor. This paper takes up his major philosophical contribution which Friedrich Hayek (1988) used in The Fatal Conceit to support his critique of constructivist rationalism. This is the concept of ‘justificationism’ which Bartley identified as a major and pervasive philosophical error, following Karl Popper’s criticism of the authoritarian strand in Western epistemology and political theory.

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© 2013 Rafe Champion

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Champion, R. (2013). Hayek, Bartley and Popper: Justificationism and the Abuse of Reason. In: Leeson, R. (eds) Hayek: A Collaborative Biography. Archival Insights into the Evolution of Economics Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137328564_10

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