Brian A. Smith’s Hayekian Walker Percy

Brian A. Smith submits that Walker Percy “placed great emphasis on the dangers of functional or utilitarian definitions of law” that deny personhood, or the quality of being human. This essay examines Smith’s study of Percy in light of Friedrich Hayek’s anti-utilitarian jurisprudence, which champions political decentralization and the devolution of power to local authorities. Smith, not Percy, is my principal subject, in particular his recent book, "Walker Percy and the Politics of the Wayfarer." I consider Percy’s account of decentralization and localism, as presented by Smith, through a Hayekian lens. Hayek’s notion of cosmos (a legal order that is grown, evolutionary, endogenous, spontaneous, and complex, and that disperses power rather than centralizing it) complements Percy’s sense of place and community as naturally ordering forces. Smith channels Hayek by insisting that “the expert’s relentless pursuit of improvement erodes the layman individual’s capacity for choice, and thus, adds anxiety and displacement in an ever-changing world."