ABSTRACT OF PAPER
Title: Between Fate and Hope, Despair and Responsibility. The continental liberal search for light and stability in a dark age
Author: Dekker Erwin
This paper analyzes the work of Wilhelm Röpke, Friedrich Hayek and Bertrand de Jouvenel of in the years leading up to, during and following WWII. It argues that these three liberal thinkers all went through a period of despair about the fate of Europe and its civilization. This despair was accompanied by a sense that the forces of history were stronger than humans. After that despair they regained (diminished) hopes about the future of Europe, and the power of men to shape that future. In fact, they all felt they had a duty to contribute to that future. The liberalisms they formulated after WWII were, however, severely tainted by the despair and the crisis of the 1930’s. There are important differences between Röpke who even though he sketches alternatives for the future remains deeply pessimistic about the future of the European civilization, Hayek who regains a mild optimism and especially in America attempts to contribute to a new liberalism and De Jouvenel who despite a deep pessimism about the inevitability of the centralization of power, ultimately conducts hopeful studies of the future. But there is also a common pattern that can be discerned in the trajectory of these liberal thinkers from different European countries. A pattern from a conviction that the scholar is primarily a student and observer of human affairs, toward the idea that the scholar has a social responsibility to contribute to his culture. The paper thus demonstrates how more or less traditional economists, in the case of Röpke and Hayek, become involved in the formulation of a new liberalism for the post-war world.
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