《致命的自负》读书报告

我喜欢了解与自己有关的事物，觉得身边的事与自己息息相关，会受到自己影响，也会影响自己。因为身处在社会主义社会的大背景下，所以最初读到这个观点颇为鲜明而独特的标题时——《致命的自负—社会主义的谬误》——就对它充满好奇：社会主义是如何在这位经济学大家的眼中展现为自负甚至已到达谬误的地步？又为何会致使自我走向灭亡呢？带着这些问题，我开始了阅读此书。

理解一个人的思想首先要了解人物的生平和当时的历史背景。早期哈耶克在维也纳大学深受奥地利经济学派的影响，刚好米塞斯的反社会主义的观点深合他的胃口，这是哈耶克个人思想的最初来源，而19xx年米塞斯发表的彻底批判社会主义的著作最终把哈耶克从费边社会主义思潮中拉了回来，这使得年轻的哈耶克坚定了反社会主义的信念。毕业后在政府的长期工作为其思想形成提供了诸多实践经验，而米塞斯的思想在这段时间对哈耶克的影响是有增无减。因此，可以说米塞斯是对哈耶克的思想影响最为深刻也最具有决定性意义的人。 再来看看历史背景，我想这里主要提到《致命的自负》这本书的历史背景。上世纪七八十年代，苏联的发展出现危机，资本主义世界中凯恩斯主义失灵，这使得哈耶克的观点受到了前所未有的重视。也使得曾一度被边缘化的哈耶克极其反社会主义思想获得了与凯恩斯主义抗衡的机会，所以才会出现哈耶克为最终的辩论做准备的情况，这也直接导致了《致命的自负》一书的创作。

《致命的自负——社会主义的谬误》是哈耶克晚年时期的对其一生思想作总结的著作。哈耶克是一个“经济不可知论”者，认为经济作为一个神秘莫测的领域应当自己发展就好。哈耶克也是一个自由主义者，所以对人为的对市场经济的干预持反对态度。这本书也正是他的这些观点的极深刻体现。

本书中哈耶克以“扩展秩序”为核心，围绕着“扩展秩序”、“文化进化”、“商品经济”来批判社会主义和理性构建主义，强调扩展秩序是对人类本能的背离，同时指出经济不是本能所能控制的，也不是理性所能设计的，所以应该任其自身发展，不应加以干预。源于不相信市场可以自发地调整的观点，非要强加以人力的行为，给经济带来的必定是扼杀。一切打算对整个社会实行计划的企图，不管它们是出于何种高尚的动机，都是建立在这种危险的知识自负上。以我个人通俗的理解，其实就是反对社会主义的计划经济对经济进行的过分干预，而提倡让市场自身发挥其作用，将自由还给市场。这也是本书的中心论点。

可能是因为最初写这部书的目的是为预期中的最后的决战大辩论做准备，所以作者的言辞观点确实显得激烈而直接。从一开篇的导论便很清晰的表达：社会主义是错误的。接着以一套调节人际关系的规则的产生为起点立论。哈耶克认为，人类从早期原始社会休戚与共的小部落，发展成广土众民、和睦相处并形成巨大而复杂交往关系的巨型社会，其中的一个关键性因素，就是人类中某一部分群体在一个类似于自然选择的过程中，形成了一套调节人际关系的规则，它在很大程度上不是人类特意计划和追求的结果，而是在无人可与之其后果的情况下，在漫长的岁月中自发进化而形成的。而人类社会自发的秩序就是其“扩展秩序”的根本。从另一个方面来说，扩展秩序也是盲目的，自发的。作者在这一部分论述中，引入了生物学的知识，通过达尔文的进化论生物进化引出文化进化，再对两者进行比较，进而说明文化和文化的传递，几乎不可能受遗传的决定。

书中的另一个重要论点则是关于习惯的论证。他所提到的习惯即是在“本能与理性之间”

的一种能力，即一种使我们适应或采纳一种模式的能力，同我们知道自己的行为会有何种结果得知是极为不同，在很大程度上我们把这种能力视之为当然。我们大多数道德规范和法律，便是这种行为习惯的产物。在哈耶克看来，这种通过学习和模仿而形成的遵守规则的行为模式，是一个进化和选择过程的产物，他处在人类的动物本能和理性之间——他超越并制约着我们的本能，但又不是来自理性。他强调这种处在“本能和理性之间”的能力，乃是因为他认为对文明发展至关重要的“扩展秩序”，就是这种能力和进化选择过程相互作用的产物。人类在不断交往中形成了某种共同遵守的行为模式，而这种模式有一个群体带来了范围不断扩大的有益影响，它可以是完全不相识的人为了各自的目标而形成相互合作，从而相互获益。因此他认为扩展秩序最大的益处，便是他为每个人提供了利用自己的知识的有益的制度空间。而这也是他追求自由主义的重要基石，是令赞成集体主义为目标的人对市场制度十分不安的一个重要原因。在哈耶克看来，坚持自由主义，通过扩展秩序，人们完全可以是分立的个人知识得到更有效的应用，更重要的是，不断扩大参与协作的社会成员之间在天赋、技能、趣味上的差异，从而大大促进一个多元化世界的形成。简而言之，秩序的重要性和价值会随着构成因素的多样性的发展而增加，而更大的秩序又会提高多样性的价值，由此是人类合作秩序的扩展变得无限广阔。这种制度的另一个奇特作用是，生活于其中的人们再也没有必要像在小团体中那样必须追求统一的目标，他们完全可以互不相识，只根据个人能力和价值引导去安排自己的生活目标。

纵观全书，作者用庞杂的论据向我们展示了自由对经济发展的重要性和社会主义的计划经济的错误。让我在阅读之初觉得极端的言论变得具有一定的合理性了。

再联系我们的实际，为何社会主义国家都是贫穷的？为何现在的中国政府又是世界是最富有的政府？我想这也正是一定程度上的对哈耶克观点的印证。虽然我们当前已经不把计划经济作为社会主义的标志和特征，但哈耶克的观点依然是具有一定正确性的。社会主义的中国正是通过给予经济自由的方式进行改革以改变了自己的状况，社会的发展离不开市场经济。

而在这里，除了该书本身的内容，我想我们能够从中感受到的还有更多的东西。从二战时期的《通往奴役之路》到这本《致命的自负》，哈耶克在这半个世纪中从一个边缘经济学人成为了享誉世界的经济学家。而这一段时间里，他并没有为了吸引世界的眼光而有什么转变，只是一味执着地坚持着自己对资本主义文明的捍卫，并且沿着这条路越走越远。哈耶克从哲学、法学、心理学、历史学甚至生物学中汲取营养、寻找证据，以至于让他原本单纯而单一的观点变得驳杂而精深。其理论的基础也早已由早期的奥地利学派和古代自由主义学说转变得庞杂许多。在凯恩斯主义风靡的年代里，坚守着其对立思想，并不断默默地为其浇水施肥助其成长是一个何其艰辛的历程！

不论我是否完全赞同他的观点，也不说我是否能够在短时间内理解他精深的作品的实际内涵。在这里，我没有看到一位诺贝尔奖得主的闪耀光环，只看到了当世界都远离他时，他却依然坚守在自己的灯下。伟人总是拥有不同于一般人的坚韧，永远都执着在自己认为对的路上。

我想我们已经不能单纯地说哈耶克是一位经济学家或者政治学家了。读过此书后，哈耶克不仅对我自身的思考做了解答，更是用他渊博的学识征服了我。

第二篇：读书报告

读 书 报 告

专业班级 学生姓名 指导教师

The Greatest Men

All of us hold dreams and America,seems is the country can makes our dreams come true.America is full of uncountable dreams.They are all achievable,touchable. Not to mention in the 20th century,Roaring Twenties,this magical era, known for unprecedented economic prosperity, the evolution of jazz music, flapper culture, and bootlegging and other criminal activity.Stocks reached record peaks and Wall street boomed in a steady golden roar.The buildings were higher.Parties were bigger.The shows were broader and ban on alcohol had backfired,making the liquor cheaper.Everything there were luring the young and ambitious.That?s when this story happened.

The Great Gatsby is a novel written by F. Scott Fitzgerald,an American author of novels and short stories who was born on September 24, 1896, in St. Paul, Minnesota,whose works are the paradigmatic writings of the Jazz Age. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century.Fitzgerald is considered a member of the "Lost Generation" of the 1920s. He finished four novels: This Side of Paradise, The Beautiful and Damned, The Great Gatsby (his most famous), and Tender Is the Night. A fifth, unfinished novel, The Love of the Last Tycoon, was published posthumously. Fitzgerald also wrote many short stories that treat themes of youth and promise along with age and despair.And this story “The Great Gatsby” was inspired by the parties he had attended while visiting Long Island's north shore and began planning the novel in 1923, desiring to produce, in his words, "something new,something extraordinary and beautiful and simple and intricately patterned." and finally first published in April 1925, The Great Gatsby received mixed reviews and sold poorly; in its first year, the book sold only 20,000 copies. Fitzgerald died in 1940, believing himself to be a failure and his work forgotten. However, the novel experienced a revival during World War II, and became a part of American high school curricula and numerous stage and film adaptations in the following decades. Today, The Great Gatsby is widely considered to be a literary classic and a contender for the title "Great American Novel". In 1998 the Modern Library editorial board voted it the 20th century's best American novel and second best English-language novel of the same time period.

Among these,what I want to mention specially is that when this book was published,Fitzgerald is just 28 years old.Furthermore,his first novel's success made him famous and let him marry the woman he loved.But later he descended into drinking.After he published 2 novels This Side of Paradise and The Beautiful and Damned,2 Short story collections Flappers and Philosophers and Tales of the Jazz Age,he became the darling of the era.For after the first world war,American economy came to a unprecedented prosperity.The new culture and new time needed new hero.Fitzgerald is just the man who is needed.His handsome,fearless,gorgeous was exactly what the young wanted and he was also the literary symbol needed by the social.As we all known,in that century,most major countries women finally won the right to vote.For these young women,they were just liberated from the old concept,and enjoyed in the

material life and in their eyes Fitzgerald?s wife Zelda was very enviable.

Fitzgerald lived a luxurious life.Even so,he has his ambition:to write a novel can describe the time.He can lived by writing short novels,but just like today,an author can?t be approved without an outstanding novel.In1922,when he was 26 years old,he moved form New York to the Long Island.He had planned to write without hullabaloo,but he obviously can?t get used to this coziness for he is lively and extravagant,so again he went on the previous days.Like Nick in The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald found this new lifestyle seductive and exciting, and like Gatsby, he had always idolized the very rich. However,for Fitzgerald,those days is not completely useless.Those sensuous days and nights became the background of The Great Gatsby. Today there are a number of theories as to which mansion was the inspiration for the book. One possibility is Land's End, a notable Gold Coast Mansion where Fitzgerald may have attended a party.Many of the events in Fitzgerald's early life are reflected throughout The Great Gatsby. Fitzgerald was a young man from Minnesota, and like Nick, he was educated at an Ivy League school (in Nick's case, Yale.)Fitzgerald belongs to the author that his books is based on his real experiences.So maybe we can say,without those showy,ostentatious in Long Island,we can not have The Great Gatsby this classic work,or it may became a totally different work.The parties,the luxurious life of the rich that described in the novel also would not exist.

In 1924,in order to find another quieter place to write and reduce their increasing expenses,Fitzgerald and his wife moved again.They left Long Island,went to the Riviera located in the south of French.In this beautiful place,he (rarely) determined to devote himself in the writing.However,his wife,Zelda,got tired of the days without her husband?s company,she didn?t know how to spend those boring time.While Fitzgerald absorbed writing The Great Gatsby. Zelda became infatuated with a dashing young French pilot, Edouard Jozan.She spent afternoons swimming at the beach and evenings dancing at the casinos with Jozan. After six weeks, Zelda asked for a divorce.In that hot summer.

Actually Zelda already had flighty affairs with some young boys when she was young. A newspaper article about one of her dance performances quoted her as saying that she cared only about "boys and swimming."She is “that” girl,hard to please and can?t get on well.After Zelda asked for divorce,Fitzgerald was so shocked that he stopped his work. Fitzgerald at first demanded to confront Jozan(like Tom did in the book),but instead dealt with Zelda's demand by locking her in their house, until she abandoned her request for divorce. Jozan did not know she'd asked for a divorce. He left the Riviera later that year, and the Fitzgerald never saw him again.When Zelda finally can thought carefully(like Daisy did),she had to stay with Fitzgerald,but just like Fitzgerald wrote in his notebook "That September 1924, I knew something had happened that could never be repaired."However,for Fitzgerald,this pain,misery,suffering,may influenced how he built “Daisy”this character or to say it properly,the shock he suffered during his writing,became another “nutriment” that helped him to become a novelist.

The novel's events are filtered through the consciousness of its narrator, Nick Carraway,a Yale graduate and World

War I veteran from the Midwest takes a job in New York as a bond salesman on the summer of 1922,who is both a part of and separate from the world he describes,within and without of the whole story. He rents a small house on Long Island, in the (fictional) village of West Egg, a wealthy but unfashionable area populated by the new rich, a group who have made their fortunes too recently to have established social connections and who are prone to garish displays of wealth,and Nick is next door to the lavish mansion of Jay Gatsby, a mysterious millionaire who holds extravagant parties but does not participate in them. Nick drives around the bay to East Egg for dinner at the home of his cousin, Daisy Fay Buchanan, and her husband, Tom, a college acquaintance of Nick's. They introduce Nick to Jordan Baker, an attractive, cynical young golfer begins a romantic relationship. She reveals to Nick that Tom has a mistress, Myrtle Wilson, who lives in the "valley of ashes":an industrial dumping ground between West Egg and New York City. Not long after this revelation, Nick travels to New York City with Tom and Myrtle to an apartment they keep for their affair. At the apartment, a vulgar and bizarre party takes place. It ends with Tom breaking Myrtle's nose after she annoys him by saying Daisy's name several times.

As the summer progresses, Nick eventually receives an invitation to one of Gatsby's parties. Nick encounters Jordan Baker at the party, and they meet Gatsby himself, an aloof and surprisingly young man who recognizes Nick from their same division in the war. Through Jordan, Nick later learns that Gatsby knew Daisy from a romantic encounter in 1917 and is deeply in love with her. He spends many nights staring at the Green Light at the end of her dock, across the bay from his mansion, hoping to one day rekindle their lost romance. Gatsby's extravagant lifestyle and wild parties are an attempt to impress Daisy in the hope that she will one day appear again at Gatsby's doorstep. Gatsby now wants Nick to arrange a reunion between himself and Daisy. Nick invites Daisy to have tea at his house, without telling her that Gatsby will also be there. After an initially awkward reunion, Gatsby and Daisy reestablish their connection. They begin an affair and, after a short time, Tom grows increasingly suspicious of his wife's relationship with Gatsby. At a luncheon at the Buchanans' house, Daisy speaks to Gatsby with such undisguised intimacy that Tom realizes she is in love with Gatsby. Though Tom is himself involved in an extramarital affair, he is outraged by his wife's infidelity. He forces the group to drive into New York City and confronts Gatsby in a suite at the Plaza Hotel, asserting that he and Daisy have a history that Gatsby could never understand. In addition to that, he announces to his wife that Gatsby is a criminal whose fortune comes from bootlegging alcohol and other illegal activities. Daisy realizes that her allegiance is to Tom, and Tom contemptuously sends her back to East Egg with Gatsby, attempting to prove that Gatsby cannot hurt him.

When Nick, Jordan, and Tom drive through the valley of ashes on their way home, they discover that Gatsby's car has struck and killed Tom's mistress, Myrtle. Nick later learns from Gatsby that Daisy, not Gatsby himself, was driving the car at the time of the accident but Gatsby intends to take the blame anyway. Myrtle's husband, George, falsely concludes that the driver of the yellow car is the secret lover he recently began suspecting she has, and sets out on foot to locate its owner. After finding out the yellow car is Gatsby's, he arrives at Gatsby's mansion where he fatally shoots

both Gatsby and then himself. Nick stages an unsettlingly small funeral for Gatsby, ends his relationship with Jordan, and moves back to the Midwest, disillusioned with the Eastern lifestyle.

The title of this book is “The Great Gatsby.”However,what makes Gatsby Great indeed?

For some people they may think what makes Gatsby great is his love for Daisy that he can sustained for almost 5 years and finally died for this.However,I think it is not.

Why we always talked about American dream and Jazz Age when we talked about this novel?

The idea of the American Dream is rooted in the United States Declaration of Independence which proclaims that “all men are created equal” and that they are “endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights” including “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”However all of these beautiful words were based on the one word “equal”.And for Jazz Age,as I talked earlier,this book was written in the 1923,before the Great Depression,the golden period of America economy to make a spurt of progress.However,with the development of society,the gap between rich and poor is growing,it is getting more and more difficult for those poor to be rich.When personal struggle can?t lead to the life of the “old money”,the American Dream is just disillusioned and became a huge sarcasm.Many young people lived in the age of the 20th ,they are just can experience the good material conditions,the prosperity of that age,but in the same time,they are deeply despaired and lost.The rich in the material and the poor in the mental makes the young generation want to oppose all the traditional concepts.So they engaged in decadent activities,spent money like water.Under this environment,Fitzgerald portrayed Gatsby as “He was a son of God—a phrase which, if it means anything, means just that—and he must be about His Father?s business, the service of a vast, vulgar, and meretricious beauty.”His Dream can?t explain the youth in that age any more.

In order to achieve his dream(some people understand this as Daisy),Gatsby tried ever since he was born in a poor family—his parents were shiftless and unsuccessful farm people,he persisted in setting strict demands on himself.He spent his youth with Dan Cody to learn everything he needed,he changed his name from Jimmy Gatz to Jay Gatsby,he invented just the sort of Jay Gatsby that a seventeen-year-old boy would be likely to invent,and to this conception he was faithful to the end.Then he met Daisy when he just want to take her at first,but he eventually fell in love with her. “I can?t describe to you how surprised I was to find out I loved her,old sport.I even hoped for a while that she?d throw me over,but she didn?t,because she was in love with me too.”But he certainly taken her under false pretences,he let Daisy believed that he was fully able to take care of her.As a matter of fact,he had no such facilities—he had no comfortable family standing behind him,and he was liable at the whim of an impersonal government to be blown anywhere about the world.Then he went abroad,when he came back,he found that Daisy already got married.In order to achieve his dream,to repeat the past,he chose to became partner with the cheater Meyer Wolfshiem,and earned money by liquor dealing which is forbade.When he finally became the new rich within few years,he bought the house at the West Egg so that Daisy would be just across the bay and he had big parties every night just expected Daisy to wander into one of his parties

some night. After he got the money,which is not earned by keeping pegging to reach success.He tried to be a different man,a gentleman.He always use “old sport”to show that he has been in the Oxford,he carried the picture of Oxford and the metal that written with “Major Jay Gatsby,For Valour Extraordinary.”

After Gatsby died,one of the few guests—his father brought his SCHEDULE and GENERAL RESOLVES.From these we can see that he was frugal,strict with himself,studied hard,took exercises everyday.All those were the traditional struggle requirements needed in the American Dream.They fully demonstrated a positive outlook on life,which is just opposite to his actions after he grown up.In order to gain power,fortune,position and Daisy?s love,he betrayed himself.

In Gatsby?s eyes,Daisy is not only a woman,but also a symbol of the “Old Money”,a link between Gatsby and the upper society.Gatsby himself also knew what kind of woman Daisy is. “ ?She?s got an indiscreet voice,?I remarked. ?It?s full of—?I hesitated.

?Her voice is full of money,?he said suddenly.”

Even so,Gatsby also always accommodated himself to Daisy.As for Gatsby,he can only got the entire life with Daisy within.

However,the reality is callous.No matter how rich he is,he can?t have the privilege that held by the property-owning classes.The sumptuous parities—although they indeed attracted all kinds of celebrities,but those people just thought it as a place for fun.They seeking every chance to show their scorn.The lawn and drive had been crowded with the faces of them,they guessed at Gatsby?s corruption,spread his rumors when they are having pleasure freely in Gatsby?s.Hence one can see that Gatsby was not only pushed aside by Tom,but also the entire upper class.Until he was shot died at his yard,there were only three guests went to his funeral.Nobody thanked his hospitality.What he got was only nothing.

“I have an idea that Gatsby himself didn?t believe it would come,and perhaps he no longer cared.If that was true he must have felt that he had lost the old warm world,paid high piece for living too long with a single dream.He must have looked up at an unfamiliar sky through frightening leaved and shivered as he found what a grotesque thing a rose is and how raw the sunlight was upon the scarcely created grass,A new world,material without being real,where poor ghosts,breathing dreams like air,drifted fortuitously about...like that ashen,fantastic figure gliding toward him through the amorphous tress.”

When I finally got into this chapter, what makes me sob is not only Daisy?s careless,Gatsby?s tragedy,but the feeling that we are so powerless,we can?t change our fate,can?t resist the reality.I finally understood,what makes Gatsby “Great”is not his Love for Daisy,but his different,he can still believe in “future”in that age.

Gatsby IS different.He is so different from those “Old Money”.He can always concealing his incorruptible dream,he always creating something,surpassing himself.But the Old Moneys,they were arrogant,careless,no gratitude,no

passion.

?They?re a rotten crowd? I shouted across the lawn. ?You?re worth the whole damn bunch put together.?This is the only compliment that Nick gave Gatsby.Also is what I want to describe Gatsby. “If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures,then there was something gorgeous about him,some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life,as if he were related to one of those intricate machines that register earthquake ten thousand miles away.This responsiveness had nothing to do withe that flabby impressionability which is dignified under the name of the ?creative temperament?- it was an extraordinary gift for hope,a romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person and which it is not likely I shall ever find again.”

“Gatsby believed in the green light,the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us.It eluded us then,but that?s no matter—tomorrow we will run faster,stretch out our arms farther...And one fine morning—

So we beat on,boats against the current,borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

This last sentence finally became Fitzgerald and his wife?s the epitaph.Fitzgerald used his whole life to explain the Jazz Age.Both he and Gatsby are the GREATEST men.