Early neoliberals were unanimous that fundamental values representing a moral order needed to be embraced and placed at the origins of a liberal society. There was disagreement over whether or not the concept of freedom was already a fundamental value or whether it was a means to an end, namely the realization of the fundamental concept of human dignity and the human person, the way in which man can, possibly, live up to his full potential. Hayek would agree on the very construction of society and its basic norms: “Like all other values, our morals are not a product but a presupposition of reason, part of the ends which the instrument of our intellect has been developed to serve. At any one stage of our evolution, the system of values into which we are born supplies the ends which our reason must serve.” He was also deeply impressed by the Catholic liberal philosopher and historian, Lord Acton, who placed human dignity at the heart of his thought. Hayek also defined “true individualism” as being based on the concept of man as a social being rather than a purely self-sufficient and isolated individual. Yet, Hayek did not call his 1960 book The Constitution of Human Dignity, but The Constitution of Liberty. Wary of what proactive jurists might do with the concept—namely, prescribe and spell out what human dignity supposedly was—Hayek always stressed the weight of the concept of freedom as fundamental, not only as a means to an end as it was for many of his fellow early neoliberals.

Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, loc. 362