On Hayek's Theory About Liberty

As far as in the 16c, Francis Bacon gave us the idea that knowledge is power, which inspires people to take advantage of nature so as to conquer nature. However, human life is not just about nature, it also has relationship with people's life around. Our goals of life are guided by the conceptions of these goals. And of all the conceptions of goals, liberty is the most important one. As a result of that, there are all kinds of different conceptions of liberty in history.I started with the review of the main idea about liberty in history, trying to distinguish the conceptions about liberty in different times. On the other side, if you want to figure out a conception logically, you need to know the essence of the conception which are the different definitions given by different philosophers. Then, we need to know why we are for or against the idea. After that, we also need to see what kind of life we are going to have if we keep consistent with the conception. Is that kind of life worthy of fighting for? As in this essay, I am trying to explain Hayek's unique liberty as liberty from…and how the liberty differs from others. Hayek's liberty relies on the limited reason. If we accept Hayek's idea about liberty, we also need to accept his spontaneous order, does that order work in reality?Hayek is a great theorist, not only because he supports classical liberalism in economic, but also defends liberty in the way of refreshing people's idea about liberty. "Liberty from…" helps us better understand the liberty, so as to safeguard our liberty. But this doesn't mean the theory is perfect. Hayek's liberty, as other theorists', also gets criticized. Hayek is often criticized as an extreme libertarian. Among these criticism, communitarianism is the strongest one. At the same time, there is also difficulty in Hayek's spontaneous order. And we need to take care of these difficulty while we are discussing Hayek's theory about liberty.