Economic Science and the Austrian Method_3

Hans-Hermann HoppeWhat does this first step in our criticism of empiricismprove? It proves evidently that the empiricist idea of knowledgeis wrong, and it proves this by means of a meaningful apriori argument. And in doing this, it shows that the Kantianand Misesian idea of true a priori synthetic propositions iscorrect. More specifically; it proves that the relationshipbetween theory and history cannot be as depicted byempiricism. There must also be a realm oftheory-theorythat is empirically meaningful-which is categorically differentfrom the only idea of theory empiricism admits tohaving existence. There must also be a priori theories, and therelationship between theory and history then must be differentand more complicated than empiricism would have usbelieve. How different indeed will become apparentwhen I present another argument against empiricism,another a priori argument, and an a priori argument againstthe thesis implied in empiricism that the relation betweentheory and empirical research is the same in every field ofknowledge.However appropriate the empiricist ideas may be indealing with the natural sciences (and I think they areinappropriate even there, but I cannot go into this here),25it is impossible to think that the methods ofempiricism canbe applicable in the social sciences.Actions are the field of phenomena which constituteswhat we regard as the subject matter of the social sciences.Empiricism claims that actions can and must be250n this see, in addition to the works cited in note 23, in particular H.Dingler, Die Ergreifung des Wirklichen (Munich: 1955); idem, Aujbau der exaktenFundamentalwissenschaft (MUnich: 1964; Paul Lorenzen, Methodisches Denken(Frankfurt/M.: 1968); E Kambartel and J. Mittelstrass, eds., Zum normativenFundament der Wissenschaft (Frankfurt/M.: 1973); also my "In Defense ofExtremeRationalism." ,The Ludwig von Mises Institute • 35