The current ‘civil war between Auburn & Fairfax’ ( Mark Sunwall’s apt description), was sparked off by Peter Boettke’s judgment that “[Don Lavoie] understood Mises better than all but two other Austrian economists (Israel Kirzner and Richard Ebeling).†Naturally this proved intolerable to some ‘Auburnites’.
Let me now suggest a via media: let us begin with the intellectual system of Mises himself. In the assessment of someone who was “probably the oldest of [Mises'] pupilsâ€: Mises’ “knowledge of [economics] surpassed that of most occupants of professorial chairs…†But Mises’ thinking was too far-reaching to stop at departmental boundaries: “[Mises] was never a real specialist†in that narrow sense. His thought was so far-ranging that “in the realm of the social sciences….he must be compared to thinkers like Voltaire or Montesquieu, Tocqueville and John Stuart Mill.†In short, Mises was a multi-faceted thinker, whose intellectual system far surpassed the limited bounds of specific departmental (& other) interests.
It seems appropriate, therefore, that people are able to specialise in only aspects or areas of Mises’ global thought. I would suggest, therefore, that Lavoie, Kirzner, Ebeling, & even Rothbard, each took further & developed or worked on, a specific, distinct aspect of Mises’ ideas. (Note that even Rothbard was compelled to separate the gold from the dross in Mises’ Human Action, hence Rothbard’s Man, Economy & State.) I believe some people would be prepared to allow even Hayek a small space on this list (perhaps at the bottom.)
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The quotes are from Peter Klein, ed, The Fortunes of Liberalism, The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek Volume IV (London: Routledge 1992) pp. 129, 153.
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Hayek is a significant thinker, whatever one’s differences with him may be. Too many are quick to brush him aside, unfortunately. I’d also list Reisman as an important student of Mises’s.
I would add that a number of issues regarding this topic, to one degree or another, involve the impact on and the position of Murray Rothbard in the Austrian School of Economics and Libertarianism compared to other prominent contributors. Regarding economics, this is especially significant as it relates to Rothbard’s acceptance and development of Mises’s praxeology and economic system.
In addition to the several publications that have already been mentioned in the related posting, I believe Rothbard’s “The Present State of Austrian Economicsâ€, which was presented in 1992 and appears in the collection “The Logic of Action Oneâ€, discusses several issues of relevance.
I know that there is tendency to want to divide by camps and talk of civil wars and things — all very spicy and thrilling, etc. but the truth is more mundane. These are small but important matters of theory and strategy between and among Austrian scholars and they are talking about them openly and frankly, which is fine. There is no official line among the so-called Auburnites, and, in fact, there are no such things. Moreover our adjunct scholars list runs to 300 people, all of whom have participated in some MI program at some. So it is really ridiculous to generalize about camps blah blah, ridiculous and tiresome and distracting. this kind of posturing is fine for shoddy venues such as politics, but we really need to get past this stuff in the intellectual world.
Precisely. Especially for a group of scholars as tiny in numbers as the Austrian School. Constructive criticism is good, divisiveness pointless.
Shenoy writes:
In the assessment of someone who was “probably the oldest of [Mises'] pupilsâ€: Mises’ “knowledge of [economics] surpassed that of most occupants of professorial chairs…â€
1) Who was “probably the oldest of [Mises'] pupils”?
2) Who said that he (whoever is being referred to in (1) above) was “probably the oldest of [Mises'] pupils”?
I propose a moratorium on all discussion about the sociology of the Austrian School, Mises, and the history here until everyone has read and digested JGH’s Last Knight of Liberalism. It is a complete rethinking of the history and meaning of the Austrian School, with all new (completely original) thought and research — ten years in the making and based not on secondary blah blah but on the real stuff, combined with the first thorough explanation of the interwar history of Continental thought. Yes, reading and thinking is harder than blogging but it is the responsible thing to do.
Until then, I have a hard time taking seriously any comments on these topics by anyone who is not reading this book. Sorry!
Anthony, Hayek was a tremendous thinker, but in terms of contributions and purifications of Mises, Hayek represents the business cycle portion of his theories.
OK Jeffrey, you’ve got me convinced…a cease fire on all fronts while everyone enjoys some juicy reading!
Good & useful as the Hulsmann biography is, I (for one) would not want to take it as definitive, superseding all previous work, allowing of no independent assessment of the major issues involved.
I am sure you certainly know that is not what Jeff was saying Sudha.
This was one of the statements made by Peter Boettke: ‘Don Lavoie’s research and teaching should be remembered in our circle and that is all I was trying to defend against what I considered to be false claims.” This statement is representative of his perspective.
My question is: Who draws the circle and who decides who is in the circle or out of the circle?
What if science advances and those who are ‘entrenched’ define the circle with boundaries that are smaller than the new parameters of the advancement?
The circle is subjectivism and since understanding humans is still a science in its infancy the boundaries are amorphous. The circle may have nothing to do with a Ph.D. or the number of journal articles written or the name of the journal where the articles appear.
Professionalism is good but it is not necessarily the loci of discovery!
I would suggest the circle has nothing to do with a Ph.D. or the number of journal articles written or the name of the journal where the articles appear.
During the moratorium on name-calling, here is a research topic that will focus the attention of our bloggers here to the new book at hand: As far as I can tell Hulsmann has written an entire biography of Mises without any reference to “apriorism” — or at least the term itself. (I have just finished my second reading, so I may have missed it.) Query: How did Hulsmann finesse this issue. Hint: Most of his discussion of methodology focuses on Theory and History. Now is this a “whitewash” by Hulsman?
Jule,
“The philosopher from Königsberg did not have the same impact on Mises. In distinct contrast to Kelsen, Mises did not have a Kantian epiphany and then set out to reconstruct economic science in the light of this idealist philosophy. Rather, Mises started from case studies and moved up to ever wider generalizations and greater abstractions. Eventually, he would realize that he could not avoid dealing with epistemological questions and then stressed the a priori nature of economic laws. But even at this point, Kantian epistemology did not have a noticeable impact on his thought.38â€
…
“In later works, Mises would modify, generalize, and qualify Menger’s views. In particular, he became famous for his interpretation of the epistemological status of the propositions of economic science that is, for his claim that these propositions are true on a priori grounds and therefore cannot be verified or refuted by the evidence of the senses. But these claims were attempts to clarify the position that Mises had inherited from Menger. The difference between Menger’s Aristotelian rhetoric and the Kantian phrasing used by Mises is glaring, but the difference is mainly rhetorical. The principal thread of continuity between Menger and Mises is an adherence to the same scientific program of developing economic theory as a descriptive discipline, distinct from other descriptive disciplines such as biology or history. Both Menger and Mises believed that their theories described certain general features of human action that exist and operate at all times and places. This is what set them fundamentally apart from Wieser and Schumpeter, and this is what still sets Mengerian economists apart from all other economists.â€
…
“His new essay on “the task and scope of the science of human action†was chapter one. It would be the keystone of the system of economics Mises had been working on for years. Taking up Lederer’s challenge, Mises argued that economic laws were true a priori, on a par with the laws of logic and mathematics.138 To the present day, this has remained one of his most controversial tenets, but the debate resulted in most cases from a misunderstanding of his position. Twentieth-century social scientists typically argued that science was always based on “experience†and that any proposition that was based instead on some arbitrary “a priori†principle was therefore not scientific. Mises agreed. He had been a proponent of rigid fact-orientation since his early years as a student. He had enthusiastically supported Max Weber in the controversy on value judgments, arguing that the proper sphere of science was the world as it is—not as it should be. Mises himself rigorously held to the notion that true science was always concerned with verifiable facts.”
Jule,
I believe the most significant discussion of apriorism is found on pages 670-674.
“Twentieth-century social scientists typically argued that science was always based on “experience†and that any proposition that was based instead on some arbitrary “a priori†principle was therefore not scientific. Mises agreed. He had been a proponent of rigid fact-orientation since his early years as a student. He had enthusiastically supported Max Weber in the controversy on value judgments, arguing that the proper sphere of science was the world as it is—not as it should be.”
This is somewhat confusing – why would he see a priori principles as arbitrary if he used them so extensively in framing his system? Am I missing something here?
Anthony,
If you read the following sentences and pages it might clarify Mises’ position:
“Mises himself rigorously held to the notion that true science was always concerned with verifiable facts.
“So why were his epistemological views controversial? Most other social theorists believed that the facts relevant for the social sciences could be known through observation-based
methods of inquiry. Here Mises disagreed. In the tradition of Carl Menger’s quest for “empirical theory,†he believed that economic theory describes facts of the real world such as the
one that human beings make choices.139 But facts of this sort cannot be observed—it is impossible for example to look at choices, to smell them or touch them. Economics is not an empirical science in this sense, but it is a science nevertheless,
because the facts it deals with are true even though they are unavailable to the human sensory apparatus. The proper method to analyze them is through “discursive reasoning.— (p. 671)
Moreover, in Epistemological Problems of
Economics, Mises states:
“For the purposes of science, we must start from the action of the individual because this is the only thing of which we can have direct cognition.” (p. 44)
And,
Science cannot proceed otherwise than discursively. Its starting points must have as much certainty as human knowledge is capable of, and it must go on from there, making logical
deductions step by step. It can begin as an aprioristic science with propositions necessary to thought that find their support and warrant in apodictic evidence; or as an empirical science
it can start with experience.” (p. 49)
However, as Greg Ransom pointed out in an earlier blog post that clarifies the initial point you quoted:
“There are few economist in history who’ve had a much up-close-and-personal empirical experience with the direct causal consequences of nearly every one of the ‘natural’ economic ‘experiments’ a state can come up with through economic intervention and monetary manipulation.”
So to simplify:
Through his experience of economic intervention and monetary manipulation in war-torn Vienna, Mises noticed the chicken, and when he sat down to write his treatise on economics, he realized their must first be an egg.
Thanks Justin. That greatly clarifies things. My only complaint with Mises would be the Kantian terms in which he constructed his system. Aristotelianism still seems superior.
Obviously I stand corrected. One can’t do a word search with the hardback copy. With acrobat pro — which I don’t have on my home computer — I found 29 uses. So we needn’t suspect the missing 200 pages. Before my first post,I did go to the section on the first chapter of Nationalokonomie to confirm my initial impression, but somehow missed the use of the term.
But it is good to see that there are diligent readers out there.
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Did Mises ever read Popper´s LSD? Did Mises ever commented on Popper´s writings? Are there any registers of Mises´s opinions on the Viena Circle? Is it possible that Hayek pointed Popper out to Mises after the war?
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