Economic Science and the Austrian Method_3

Economic Science and the Austrian MethodAnd regarding historicism, its self-contradictions are noless manifest. For if, as historicism claims, historical andeconomic events-which it conceives of as sequences ofsubjectively understood rather than observed events-arenot governed by any constant, time-invariant relations, thenthis very proposition also cannot claim to say anythingconstantly true about history and economics. Instead, itwould be a proposition with, so to speak, a fleeting truthvalue: it may be true now; ifwe wish it so, yet possibly falsea moment later, in case we do not, with no one ever knowinganything about whether we do or do not. Yet, if this werethe status of the basic historicist premise, it, too, wouldobviously not qualify as an epistemolog~ Historicismwould not have given us any reason why we should believeany of it. If, however, the basic proposition of historicismwere assumed to be invariandy true, then such a propositionabout the constant nature of historical and economic phenomenawould contradict its own doctrine denying any suchconstants. Furthermore, the historicist's-and even more soits modern heir, the hermeneutician's-claim that historicaland economic events are mere subjective creations, unconstrainedby any objective factors, is proven false by the verystatement making it. For evidentl~a historicist must assumethis very statement to be meaningful and true; he mustpresume to say something specific about something, ratherthan merely uttering meaningless sounds like abracadabra.Yet if this is the case, then, clearly; his statement must beassumed to be constrained by something outside the realmof arbitrary subjective creations. Of course, I can say whatthe historicist says in English, German, or Chinese, or inany other language I wish, in so far as historic and economicexpressions and interpretations may well be regarded asmere subjective creations. But whatever I say in whatever58 • The Ludwig von Mises Institute