Hayek and Individualism : Some Question Marks

Hayek’s attachment to an evolutionary analysis of socio-economic life is often interpreted as creating problems for his enduring commitment to Methodological Individualism (henceforth MI). This paper tackles this question by focusing on the consequences of the shift of ideas expressed by his later works. It analyses Hayek’s evolutionary theory of spontaneous order and outlines the systemic and holist dimensions entailed by the notion of self-organisation. I argue that to describe Hayek’s methodological framework as a case of mi is to overlook the crucial developments that took place in the late 1950s as he went on to articulate his view of social order as a complex adaptive system.