The Greek Classical Origins of the Austrian Evolutionary Theory of Institutions: Democritus and Generous Egoism

	Type A Knowledge	Type B knowledge
Oakeshott	Practical (traditional)	Scientific (or technical)
Hayek	Dispersed	Centralised
Polanyi	Tacit	Articulated
Mises	Based on ‘one-off events’ or ‘case-by-case’	On ‘classes’
Democritus	Bastard (self-referential)	Legitimate (gnosis)

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.52195/pm.v24i1.1995 | Journal eISSN: 1697-6797

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Language: Spanish, English

Page range: 1 - 31

Submitted on: Dec 22, 2025

Accepted on: Mar 1, 2026

Published on: Aug 12, 2026

Published by: Unión Editorial S.A. in collaboration with the Faculty of Economics and Entrepreneurial Sciences of Universidad Rey Juan Carlos of Madrid

In partnership with: Paradigm Publishing Services

Keywords:

Democritus,

Austrian School,

spontaneous order,

institutional evolution,

generous egoism

JEL:

B1,

B31,

P16

Related subjects:

Business and economics,

Political economics,

Economic theory, systems and structures,

Economic policy,

History of economics,

Political economics, other

© 2026 Pablo A. Martín-Grande, published by Unión Editorial S.A. in collaboration with the Faculty of Economics and Entrepreneurial Sciences of Universidad Rey Juan Carlos of Madrid
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 License.

Volume 23 (2026): Issue 1 (June 2026)