Paul Ryan, Catholic Social Thought, and Hayek’s “False Individualism”

Robert George responds at First Things and Mirror of Justice to an anti-Paul Ryan statement by a collection of Catholic thinkers (“On All of Our Shoulders”). One observation that may be worth adding to the conversation is that “individualism” is a word of many meanings. The individualism attacked in “On All of Our Shoulders” is much closer to what Hayek rejects as “false individualism” than to what he advocates as “true individualism.” See Individualism: True and False (essay 1 in F.A. Hayek, Individualism and Economic Order). I suspect that many signatories of “On All of Our Shoulders” would find much more to agree with than they might expect to find in Hayek’s defense of individualism.

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