Thomas Sowell’s Hayekian Liberalism

Despite the ideological impartiality claimed by Thomas Sowell and many of his followers, he is frequently boxed into the category of conservatism. This article challenges this assumption by advancing a reading of the conceptual foundations of Sowell’s thought as fundamentally Hayekian. While Hayek’s influence on Sowell is well documented—he was Sowell’s professor at the University of Chicago, and Hayek regarded Sowell’s work on knowledge and decisions as a creative continuation of his own—the significance of this influence is often overlooked in favor of other figures in Sowell’s career, such as Milton Friedman. Although this article does not deny the influence of other thinkers on Sowell’s work, it proposes an alternative interpretation that reveals parallels to Hayek’s ideas and advances a reading of Sowell as a Hayekian liberal by focusing on three key concepts across his work: freedom, justice, and order. Each of these concepts heavily relies on a shared lineage between Hayek’s British evolutionary tradition and Sowell’s constrained vision. I argue that the conceptual foundation of Sowell’s thought is Hayekian, regardless of clear methodological differences.