On emancipators, engineers, and students: The appropriate attitude of the economist

Erwin Dekker

The Review of Austrian Economics, 2020, vol. 33, issue 1, No 4, 55-68

Abstract: Abstract This paper presents an original conceptualization of the different attitudes economists have expressed toward their object of study. It distinguishes between a humanist and a scientist tradition in economics and argues that both stances can be combined with an active and a passive attitude. This results in four different positions or attitudes, that of the positive scientist (passive scientist), the social engineer (active scientist), the student (passive humanist) and the emancipator (active humanist). The paper explores the implications of the four positions and it argues that there are many threads within Austrian economics and Virigina Political Economy that point toward the attitude of the active humanist. As such it is an extension and a correction of the distinction drawn between the student and the scientist in my book Viennese students of Civilization (2016). It is argued that the emancipator position has to explicitly engage with what Buchanan calls ‘might-bes’, that is hypothetical changes in rules, institutions, or human behavior, and as such has important links with the critical tradition on the left.

Keywords: Students of civilization; Richard Rorty; James M. Buchanan; Scholarly attitude; Humanomics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: B25 B41 B53 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11138-019-00439-y Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:revaec:v:33:y:2020:i:1:d:10.1007_s11138-019-00439-y

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... ce/journal/11138/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s11138-019-00439-y

Access Statistics for this article

The Review of Austrian Economics is currently edited by Peter Boettke and Christopher Coyne

More articles in The Review of Austrian Economics from Springer, Society for the Development of Austrian Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().