Part 1 - The Institute Libraries - Institute for Advanced Study

any specialty in the field, and who would be competent to research in
an; of them and adapt his rethod to the subject of inquiry. Above all,
such a man must approach American economists and their methods with a
fully developed critical viewpoint. Viner himself seemed inclined to
favor the vanishing school of thought which treated economics as
primarily a social philosophy with special emphasis on the
business organization of society, on standards of living.
class stratification, prosperity and poverty, etc ... usually
with a marked ethical flavor....Econoaics here is...far away
in the subject ratter and mthods of reaching its conclusions
from the 'scientific' disciplines like physics end chemistry
.... It should hzve no pretensions to being scientific, but it
should not, on that account, have too mch of an inferiority
complex.
The professor was very critical of the so-called "institutionalists" and
the quantitative schools of thought toward which he found Flexner gravi-
tating. 26
Despite their differing views, Flexner did not tell Frankfurter
then that he was not really considering Viner. However, in the winter
of 1934 the two friends became alienated, and Flexner took occasion to
end discussion of the economist when it was announced that Mr. Horgen-
thau had appointed him to be one of his consultants. Then he wrote
Frankfurter:
I am afraid Viner's relationship with Horgenthau and the
need of cooperation in doing polite things may hurt him..
although there is always the possibility it may simply en-
rich him.27
The first appointment to the second School came about before
the Director was really raady, and seems to have led Flexner into a dif-
\,ferent concept of it. Dr. David Hitrany, a Roumanian living in England,
\
\
an \internationalist, journalist and political scientist, had been a
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