From Chapter 8, The Quest for Justice, from the second volume of Law, Legislation, and Liberty:
“Strictly speaking, only human conduct can be called just or unjust. If we apply the terms to a state of affairs, they have meaning only in so far as we hold someone responsible for bringing it about or allowing it to come about. A bare fact, or a state of affairs which nobody can change, may be good or bad, but not just or unjust. To apply the term ‘just’ to circumstances other than human actions or the rules governing them is a category mistake. Only if we mean to blame a personal creator does it make sense to describe it as unjust that somebody has been born with a physical defect, or been stricken with a disease, or has suffered the loss of a loved one. Nature can be neither just nor unjust. Though our inveterate habit of interpreting the physical world animistically or anthropomorphically often leads us to such a misuse of words, and makes us seek a responsible agent for all that concerns us, unless we believe that somebody could and should have arranged things differently, it is meaningless to describe a factual situation as just or unjust.
But if nothing that is not subject to human control can be just (or moral), the desire to make something capable of being just is not necessarily a valid argument for our making it subject to human control; because to do so may itself be unjust or immoral, at least when the actions of another human being are concerned.”
Reading Hayek is an acquired skill. His tendency to place his most important insights somewhere within 100-word sentences that require multiple readings and ponderings to fully digest his meaning can be exhausting to the first-time reader.
But one thing I’ve found when reading Hayek’s books for a second or third time, is that it’s not quite the same book. What appears as needless redundancy reveals itself to be deeper insights into the phenomena of spontaneous order, it’s functioning, and the rules needed that create the environment for it to form. Once you’ve acclimated yourself to his surgically precise, yet lengthy, writing style, you realize he’s not repeating himself anywhere. There’s nothing extra here, Hayek has distilled his explanation of spontaneous order as far as possible without pouring the liquid out. I also remain convinced that the most invincible, most convincing defense of liberty lies within the pages of Hayek’s trilogy.
