Mirowski’s characterization of neoliberalism as a “catechism” suggests that it constitutes a moral and metaphysical imagination. Neoliberals, he writes, admonish the individual to relinquish her “selfish arrogance” and “humbly prostrate … before the Wisdom of the Universe”—a Wisdom contemplated with reverent awe by Friedrich Hayek and President Reagan. Justifying the ways of the market to mere mortals, Hayek insisted that the “spontaneous order” of competitive enterprise must not be disrupted by fallible human judgments.
