Karl Mittermaier’s Pursuit of Classical Liberal Coherence

Abstract

Karl Mittermaier (1938-2016) was a classical liberal economist at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. He completed a work in 1986 titled The Hand Behind the Invisible Hand: Dogmatic and Pragmatic Views on Free Markets and the State of Economic Theory, being published in 2020 for the first time. Here I treat Mittermaier’s rich meditation, which I interpret as a pursuit of greater coherence in classical liberal thought. Mittermaier emphasizes the moral, cultural, and institutional preconditions of a liberal market order, and he says that some of the preconditions depend on people feeling that they have reason to embrace such classical liberal principles. The preconditions, then, depend in part on the perception of coherence and appeal of the liberal order. The present essay is written for the new volume presenting The Hand Behind the Invisible Hand.