Economic Science and the Austrian Method_3

Hans-Hennann Hoppelanguage I choose must be assumed to be constrained by someunderlying propositional meaning of my statement, which isthe same for any language, and exists completely independentofwhatever the peculiar linguistic form may be in which it isexpressed. And contrary to historicist belief, the existence ofsuch a constraint is not such that one could possibly disposeof it at will. Rather, it is objective in that we can understandit to be the logically necessary presupposition for sayinganything meaningful at all, as opposed to merely producingmeaningless sounds. The historicist could not claim to sayanything if it were not for the fact that his expressions andinterpretations are actually constrained by laws oflogic as thevery presupposition ofmeaningful statements as such. 48With such a refutation of empiricism and historicism,Mises notices, the claims of rationalist philosophy are successfullyreestablished, and the case is made for the possibilityof a priori true statements, as those ofeconomics seem to be.Indeed, Mises explicitly regards his own epistemological investigationsas the continuation ofthe work ofwestern rationalistphilosoph~ With Leibniz and Kant he stands oppositethe tradition of Locke and Hume. 49 He sides with Leibnizwhen he answers Locke's famous dictum "nothing is in theintellect that has not previously been in the senses" with hisequally famous one "except the intellect itself." And he recognizeshis task as a philosopher of economics as strictlyanalogous to that of Kant's as a philosopher of pure reason,i.e., of epistemologr Like Kant, Mises wants to demonstratethe existence oftrue a priori synthetic propositions, or propositionswhose truth values can be definitely established, even48See on this in particular Hoppe, "In Defense of Extreme Rationalism."49See Mises, The Ultimate Foundation ofEconomic Science, p. 12.The Ludwig von Mises Institute • 59