210103 SE M3: Political Theories and Research on Theory (2023W)

Hans Kelsen (1881-1973), Joseph A. Schumpeter (1883-1950) and Friedrich August von Hayek (1899-1992) were three of the most important and influential Austrian thinkers of the last century. Kelsen is regarded by many as “the outstanding jurist of the twentieth century” (Richard Tur and William Twining). Schumpeter has been called “the most influential economist of the twentieth century” (Peter Drucker). And Hayek, a winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences and arguably the most controversial of the three, is often considered to be one of the pioneering minds behind “neo-liberalism.” This seminar aims to revisit key texts of the three thinkers, critically interrogating them and asking what they can still teach us about our world today. The seminar is structured around three core themes: (1) capitalism, (2) democracy and (3) the law. (1) Capitalism is the main domain of Schumpeter and Hayek, and we will explore their ground-breaking contributions to understanding capitalism and its inherent dynamics and instability through concepts such as “creative destruction” (Schumpeter) and “spontaneous order” (Hayek). (2) Democracy plays a crucial role for all three thinkers, and here our focus will be on Kelsen and Schumpeter’s canonical “realist” accounts of representative democracy, as well as on Hayek’s more sceptical take on democracy’s essence and value that has sometimes been interpreted as betraying a sympathy for an authoritarian (minimal) state. Finally, (3) the law is a key concept in both Kelsen and Hayek’s work, though the two approach it in starkly different fashion: while Kelsen is exclusively concerned with analysing positive law, Hayek urges us to conceive law as both positive law and law as sedimented rules of social order that have developed in an evolutionary fashion. Examining these three broader themes, the seminar will not only use primary texts, but also contemporary secondary texts that bring the work of Kelsen, Schumpeter and Hayek into a dialogue with the present.