ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF ECONOMICS 143

It is just that economics is in time, in a way that the natural sciences are not. All economic data are dated, so that inductive evidence can never do more than establish a relation which appears to hold within the period to which the data refer.

(Hicks 1979, p. 38)

What is to be done? While some conclusions to be drawn from the argument presented seem obvious, others are less readily discernible at present.

Austrians must join with non-Austrians in an effort to co-ordinate the hermeneutically relevant parts of their respective traditions, a task calling for historical perspicacity in selecting appropriate parts of these traditions as well as some dexterity in handling ideas. In short, the situation demands the typical skills of a ‘broker of ideas’ who has a flair for fitting together cognate ideas of various origins. Austrians and their hermeneutical allies must also attempt to establish some rapport with other social scientists and philosophers interested in exploring similar themes. The need for an ‘economic sociology’ in the study of institutions is an obvious example. Another is the need for reaching a new accord between economics and history in the light of what we recently learnt from Hicks (economics is ‘facing both ways, it is in a key position’) and of what is in any case a corollary of Shackle’s teaching (see the quotation on p. 142).

Beyond the horizon constituted by these immediate tasks there loom other, more formidable, problems that will have to be tackled in the future.

The ‘market process’ is an item high on the agenda of the Austrian research programme. The market, needless to say, offers a particularly fascinating example of an area of intersubjectivity in which vast numbers of men interact with one another in the pursuit of their multifarious needs and interests. It calls for treatment by a method inspired by the hermeneutical style, a method which defies the spirit of orthodox formalism. As regards price formation (for example, a prominent feature of the market process), the different meanings assigned to it by different groups of participants (in particular, price setters and price takers) call for our attention.

At some time in the future the concept of ‘plan’—a fundamental hermeneutic notion, as we saw—will have to be introduced into the theory of consumption. If firms make and carry out plans, why not households?

The realm of economics cannot forever remain closed to the rays of hermeneutical enlightenment.

REFERENCES

Hahn, F.H. (1975) ‘Revival of political economy: the wrong issues and the wrong argument’, Economic Record, Sept., p. 363.

Hicks, J.R. (1979) Causality in Economics, Oxford: Blackwell.

Hutchison, T.W. (1938) The Significance and Basic Postulates of Economic Theory,

London: Macmillan.

144 AUSTRIAN ECONOMICS

Keynes, J.M. (1973, 1979) Collected Writings, vols xiv (1973) and XXIX (1979). Knight, F.H. (1940) ‘What is truth in economics?’, Journal of Political Economy 48

(February): 27–8

Lachmann, L.M. (1977) Capital, Expectations and the Market Process, Kansas City: Sheed Andrews.

Lavoie, D. (1986) ‘Euclideanism versus hermeneutics: a reinterpretation of Misesian apriorism’, in Israel M.Kirzner (ed.) Subjectivism, Intelligibility, and Economic

Understanding: Essays in Honor of Ludwig M. Lachmann on his Eightieth Birthday,

New York: New York University Press.

Shackle, G.L.S. (1972) Epistemics and Economics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Weber, M. (1968) Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology (ed. by Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich), New York: Bedminster Press.

Part III

Alternative views of hermeneutics from a particular economic standpoint: the controversy in the Austrian school