Economic Science and the Austrian Method_3

ON PRAXEOLOGYAND THE PRAXEOLOGICALFOUNDATION OF EPISTEMOLOGYIAs have most great and innovative economists, Ludwigvon Mises intensively and repeatedly analyzedthe problem of the logical status of economicpropositions, i.e., how we come to know them and how wevalidate them. Indeed, Mises ranks foremost among illose whohold that such a concern is indispensable in order to achievesystematic progress in economics. For any misconceptionregarding the answer to such fundamental questions ofone'sintellectual enterprise would naturally have to lead to intellectualdisastet; i.e., to false economic doctrines. Accordingl~ threeof Mises's books are devoted entirely to clarifying the logicalfoundations ofeconomics: His early Epistemological Problems ofEconomics, published in German in 1933; his Theory andHistory of 1957; and his Ultimate Foundations of EconomicScience of 1962, Mises's last book, appearing when he wasalready well past his eightieth birthda~ And his works in thefield ofeconomics proper also invariably display the importancewhich Mises attached to the analysis ofepistemologicalThis essay is from Hans-Hermann Hoppe, The Economics and Ethics ofPripateProperty (Kluwer Academic Publishers in 1993), pp. 141-64 and it is reprintedhere with permission of Kluwer Academic Publishers.The Ludwig von Mises Institute • 49