New Working paper:
Ludwig von Mises and Hannah Arendt on Human Action, by Mark R. Crovelli (University of Colorado)
Few intellectuals have placed more emphasis on the concept of human action than the Austrian-born economist Ludwig von Mises and the German-born political philosopher Hannah Arendt. Indeed, Ludwig von Mises’s entire elaboration of economic science is imputable to his singular conception of human action. Similarly, Hannah Arendt’s entire political philosophy rests upon her own unique conception of human action. This shared emphasis on the concept of human action by Mises and Arendt is not, however, due to a shared conception of human action itself. In fact, while Mises’s conception of human action is similar in some respects to that of Arendt, it also differs radically in many other important respects from that of Arendt. In this article, I will examine some of the similarities and differences between Ludwig von Mises’s and Hannah Arendt’s respective conceptions of human action. Special attention will be paid to their disparate epistemological positions, which, I will argue, are ultimately responsible for their dissimilar conceptions of human action. I will conclude with a discussion of some reasons that Ludwig von Mises’s conception of human action highlights some severe deficiencies in Hannah Arendt’s conception of human action.
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