The present essay is an attempt to explore with some thoroughness an extremely narrow area within the field of the history of economic thought. Although this area is narrow, it merits a scrutiny quite out of proportion to its extension, relating as it does to fundamental ideas around which the entire corpus of economic thought has revolved for some two centuries. It remains as true today as ever before that the direction taken by economic theory is in large measure determined by the "point of view" adopted by the economist as his special perspective. It is in this connection that the present study seeks to make its contribution, by setting up the problem in its proper context as a chapter in the history of ideas.... READ MORE

The title of this paper contains an apparent paradox: it assumes that Austrian economic theory can have philosophical and ethical implications, while the tradition within Austrian economics has been strongly in support of Wertfreiheit as a cardinal precept of scientific propriety. A good deal of what I have to say in this paper relates to the resolution of this paradox. Let us first rapidly review the history of the doctrine of value-freedom in economics. READ MORE