This is exactly why Hayek thought that the French “engineering” flavor/tendency of its “modern liberal” thought (from Descartes to Condorcet to Comte) which is embodied by the new Republic’s educational institution (1794), the engineering school École Polytechnique[1], is a “false” individualism/liberalism and will only lead to communist dictatorship.
In Individualism and Economic Order (1948), Hayek quotes Descartes from the Discourse on Method: “there is seldom so much perfection in works composed of many separate parts, upon which different hands had been employed, as in those completed by a single master”.
Personally, I think this is false. France’s modern and contemporary illiberalism doesn’t come from the French Cartesian rationalism (= the “engineering” flavor/tendency of its modern liberal thinkers) but from its centuries long authoritarian tradition. Even Voltaire was in favor of enlightened absolutism.
Mathematics and engineering were just new, more modern, means for the same end (top-down authority with one or two heads to design/control the whole society).
[1] The École Polytechnique is France’s number 1 school, which forms all the elites of the country. Symptomatically, the students undergo military training and have military status (officer cadets).
