Friedrich Hayek - Early Life

Early Life

Hayek was born in Vienna (then the capital of Austria-Hungary), and was the son of August von Hayek, a doctor in the municipal health service. Hayek's grandfathers were prominent academics working in the fields of statistics and biology. His paternal line had been raised to the ranks of the Bohemian nobility for its services to the state. Similarly, a generation before his maternal forebears had also been raised to the lower noble rank. However, after 1919 titles of nobility were banned by law in Austria, and the "von Hayek" family became simply the Hayek family. Hence, after 1919, Hayek's legal name became "Friedrich Hayek", not "Friedrich von Hayek". Hayek's father turned his work on regional botany into a highly esteemed botanical treatise, continuing the family's scholarly traditions.

On his mother's side, Hayek was second cousin to the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. His mother often played with Wittgenstein's sisters, and had known Ludwig well. As a result of their family relationship, Hayek became one of the first to read Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus when the book was published in its original German edition in 1921. Although Hayek only met Wittgenstein on a few occasions, Hayek said that Wittgenstein's philosophy and methods of analysis had a profound influence on his own life and thought. In his later years, Hayek recalled a discussion of philosophy with Wittgenstein, when both were officers during World War I. After Wittgenstein's death, Hayek had intended to write a biography of Wittgenstein and worked on collecting family materials, and he later assisted biographers of Wittgenstein.

At his father's suggestion as a teenager, Hayek read the genetic and evolutionary works of Hugo de Vries and the philosophical works of Ludwig Feuerbach. In school Hayek was much taken by one instructor's lectures on Aristotle's ethics.

In 1917, he joined an artillery regiment in the Austro-Hungarian Army and fought on the Italian front. Much of Hayek's combat experience was spent as a spotter in an aeroplane. Hayek suffered damage to his hearing in his left ear during the war, and was decorated for bravery.

Hayek then decided to pursue an academic career, determined to help avoid the mistakes that had led to the war. Hayek said about his experience: "The decisive influence was really World War I. It's bound to draw your attention to the problems of political organization." He vowed to work for a better world.

Read more about this topic:  Friedrich Hayek

Famous quotes containing the words early life, early and/or life:

    ... goodness is of a modest nature, easily discouraged, and when much elbowed in early life by unabashed vices, is apt to retire into extreme privacy, so that it is more easily believed in by those who construct a selfish old gentleman theoretically, than by those who form the narrower judgments based on his personal acquaintance.
    George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)

    Well, it’s early yet!
    Robert Pirosh, U.S. screenwriter, George Seaton, George Oppenheimer, and Sam Wood. Dr. Hugo Z. Hackenbush (Groucho Marx)

    The great end of life is not knowledge, but action. What men need is as much knowledge as they can assimilate and organize into a basis for action; give them more and it may become injurious. One knows people who are as heavy and stupid from undigested learning as other are from over-fulness of meat and drink.
    Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)