Vom »Gesetz« zur »Form« Überlegungen zum epistemischen und methodologischen Status der Volkswirtschaftslehre / From »Law« to »Form«. Considerations about the epistemic and methodological status of economics

Groß Steffen W.

ORDO. Jahrbuch für die Ordnung von Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, 2011, vol. 62, issue 1, 405-424

Abstract: This paper is concerned with fundamental epistemic and methodological issues in economics. Its core argument is that economics should be conceived and understood as a part of the humanities: that is, a part of the broad study of man, and of academic endeavour that seeks to explain both individual and social action. It raises the central question of how human action can be adequately perceived and conceptualised in economics, and views critically the behavioural approach, which is currently quite prominent. One of the shortcomings of behavioural economics is that it does not distinguish clearly enough between behaviour and action. It consequently overlooks, or at least underplays, the symbolic representations that underlie all human action. In elucidating this theme the paper questions the naturalistic approach to economics, and also the discipline’s pretensions to be, like physics, a predictive science. With recourse to the works of Ernst Cassirer in the field of philosophy and logic of the humanities, this paper argues for an approach to economics that eschews the traditional stress on determining and defining laws, and instead interprets economics as a symbolic form of thought, through which the human world is both created and can be understood.

Date: 2011
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DOI: 10.1515/ordo-2011-0118

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