Bringing Social Structure Back into Economics: On Critical Realism and Hayek's Scientism Essay

Jochen Runde

The Review of Austrian Economics, 2001, vol. 14, issue 1, 5-24

Abstract: This paper offers a critique of the critical realist (CR) interpretation of Friedrich Hayek's famous essay Scientism and the Study of Society presented in Tony Lawson's recent Economics and Reality. It is argued, contrary to Lawson's reading, that Hayek's social structures (1) do have an existence over and above the conceptions of the individual actors and (2) serve as a precondition for human action on the lines proposed by CR. Some links are made between Hayek's essay and the theory of social reality recently proposed by John Searle, and some comparisons drawn with CR. Copyright 2001 by Kluwer Academic Publishers

Date: 2001
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