Schutz on Meaning and Culture*

Virgil Henry Storr

Mercatus Center

George Mason University

Arlington, Virginia

email: vstorr@gmu.edu

web: http://www.ihika.org/ki/

Abstract

The hermeneutical Austrians wanted to provide (1) a philosophically sound explanation of the

contention that praxeology is a science of meaning and (2) justification for an approach to

empirical/historical work that favors ethnographic methods. This article argues that had the

hermeneutical Austrians relied on Alfred Schutz rather than Hans-Georg Gadamer to support

their positions much of the firestorm surrounding their methodological pronouncements could

have been avoided. Schutz’s phenomenology offers a more than adequate defense for these (two)

positions and, as a member of the Austrian school, his views on these arguments may have been

more readily received.

Keywords: Schutz, Gadamer, Phenomenology, Hermeneutics, Culture and Economy, Thick

Descriptions

* This revised version of this article is forthcoming in the Review of Austrian Economics. I am

grateful to Don Lavoie, Peter Boettke, David Prychitko, Steven Horwitz, Rob Garnett, Paul Lewis

and Emily Chamlee-Wright for useful discussions on this topic and/or comments on earlier

versions of this paper. The standard disclaimer applies.

2

1. Introduction

The debate over the relevance of hermeneutics to Austrian economics that occurred in the late

1980s and early 1990s was largely a waste of time. What good might have come from the

hermeneutical Austrians’ call for an ‚interpretive turn‛ was lost because of the sharp resistance

that those calls met in Austrian circles. At least two of their arguments, however, deserve a fresh

hearing: (1) their attempt to provide a philosophically sound explanation of the contention that

praxeology is a science of meaning and (2) their effort to justify an approach to

empirical/historical work that favors ethnographic methods. The answers that the hermeneutical

Austrians offered to these questions, I contend, appeared more controversial than they in fact

were.

Because the hermeneutical Austrians primarily relied on philosophical hermeneutics, I suggest,

their arguments concerning meaning and culture fell under a cloud. Arguably, Gadamer and

Ricoeur (the leading figures in philosophical hermeneutics) were too alien, too easily

misunderstood, too easily linked with ‚real nihilists‛ like Derrida, and so brought too much

baggage with them the discussion. Alfred Schutz (a close friend of Mises and a member of the

Austrian school), I believe, can help us to clear the air.1 An Austrian economics that is focused on

meaning and is complemented by a qualitative empirical method that offers thick descriptions of

particular cultural contexts, I believe, does not need to rely on hermeneutics for its philosophical

basis but can instead be articulated along Schutzian lines.

This article is not an attempt to rehearse the disagreements over hermeneutics, to argue for either

side, or to change the conventional view of who won and who lost that ‚debate.‛ Rather, it is an

attempt to rescue two arguments (about the meaning of meaning and the role of thymology) that

1 Alfred Schutz is one of the founders of interpretive sociology and one of the most influential

sociologists of the 20th century. His Phenomenology of the Social World (1967) is arguably his most

important work along with the essays in Collected Papers of Alfred Schutz Volumes I-IV (1962, 1964,

1966, 1996). Of particular interests to Austrians are Schutz’s essays on political economy

including his review of Mises’ Grundprobleme der Nationalökonomie (‚Basic Problems of Political

Economy‛) and the essay he presented at Mises’ private seminar on the occasion of Hayek’s 1936

visit to Vienna (‚Political Economy: Human Conduct in Social Life‛). For discussions of Schutz’s

personal and intellectual connections to Mises and the Austrian school see Augier (1999), Boettke

(1998), Foss (1996), Koppl (1997), Kurrild-Kitgaard (2003) and Prendergast (1986).

3

I believe are consistent with Mises’ praxeology, that were articulated and stressed by the

hermeneutical Austrians, and that have significant but under-explored implications. The next

section offers a brief history of the hermeneutics debate and argues that the hermeneutical

Austrians would have been better served had they relied more extensively on Schutz. The rest of

the article explores what praxeology and history pursued along Schutzian lines would look like.

2. A Brief History of the Hermeneutics Debate

The hermeneutical Austrians had turned to the philosophical hermeneutics of Gadamer and

Ricoeur in order to philosophically justify a focus on meaning in theoretical writings and to stress

qualitative, interpretive approaches to history.2 Agreeing with Mises, the hermeneutical

Austrians insisted that because praxeology is concerned with purposeful behavior it has to focus

on the meanings that individuals attach to their actions. As Mises (1963: 26) stated, ‚we cannot

approach our subject if we disregard the meaning which acting man attaches to the situation, i.e.,

the given state of affairs, and to his behavior with regard to this situation.‛ Social phenomena

can only be explained, the hermeneutical Austrians agree, by reference to the plans and purposes

of individuals. But they add, following Hayek, as social scientists we should also be mindful that

many social phenomena are not brought about intentionally but are the ‚unintended

consequences‛ of purposeful human action.3 Finding support in Ricoeur’s discussions of how

readers are able to understand a text (see, especially, Ricouer 1976) and Gadamer’s writings about

how dialogical partners can understand each other in conversation (see, especially, Gadamer

1976, 1989), the hermeneutical Austrians began reformulating Mises and Hayek’s insights about

purposefulness and unintended consequences in light of philosophical hermeneutics.

2 See Lavoie’s Economics and Hermeneutics (1990a) and Prychitko’s Individuals, Institutions,

Interpretations (1995) for overviews of the hermeneutical Austrian project. See also Horwitz

(1995), Lavoie (1987, 1990b, 1990c, 1995a)

3 Consequently, though a focus on the meaning that an individual attaches to his actions is

essential, we must remain aware that the ‚meaning of an action‛ for us in our role as social

scientists cannot simply be what the actor intended. Rather, the ‚meaning of an action,‛

Gadamer suggests, is a fusion of horizons between the actor’s intentions and the social scientist’s

theoretical frame. See Heckman (1986) for a discussion of the implications of Gadamer’s

hermeneutics for the methodology of the social sciences.

4

Similarly, the hermeneutical Austrians believed that they found in hermeneutics the

philosophical apparatus necessary to defend Mises’ deprecation of quantitative approaches to the

study of history and his support for the thymological method. As Mises (1963: 55) argues, ‚those

economists who want to substitute ‘quantitative economics’ for what they call ‘qualitative

economics’ are utterly mistaken. There are, in the field of economics, no constant relations, and

consequently no measurement is possible.‛ The econometrician can establish certain historical

facts, he can point to correlations that may or may not be ‚significant‛ (in the everyday sense of

the word), but this does not abrogate the need for interpretation. Because history is about why

certain events occurred and not just about what events occurred, because any discussion of why

some human event occurred must make reference to the purposes and plans of individuals,

history must concern itself with the thymological aspects of human action.

Thymology is a ‚branch of history‛ that ‚deals with the mental activities of men that determine

their actions‛ (Mises 2006: 43). An empirical method that truly complemented a science of

meaning would necessarily focus on the meanings that individuals attach to their actions, the

mental activities which determine their actions and the social context where their actions are

embedded. This opens the door for qualitative methods that get at ‚the way in which different

people value different conditions, < their wishes and desires and their plans to realize these

wishes and desires‛ (Mises 1985: 266). Our applied work, Mises (ibid.) suggests, should pay

attention to ‚the social environment in which a man lives and acts.‛ Gadamer’s work on the

universality and significance of language and the role of tradition in guiding (though not

determining) practice, the hermeneutical Austrians suggested, lends support to a focus on culture

when trying to understand the immediate or distant past (see Lavoie 1991a).

The Austrian school vehemently rejected the ‚interpretive turn.‛ Or, at least, that is the standard

view of the ‚debate‛ which took place in the late 1980s and early 1990s over the significance of

philosophical hermeneutics for Austrian economics. As early as 1990, for instance, Rothbard was

asserting that ‚hermeneutics has been crushed by Hans-Hermann Hoppe and David Gordon‛

(AEN 1990).4 And, a year later, Leland Yeager was pronouncing that hermeneutics was ‚a flash

in the pan‛ (AEN 1991). The proposition that the Austrian school ‚overcome its own formalism

4 Rothbard is likely referring to Hoppe (1989) and Gordon (1986).

5

and reconnect theory and history with one another‛ simply did not enjoy much traction amongst

most Austrians.5 Mises had drawn an indelible line between theory and history and the attempt

by Lavoie, Ebeling and the other hermeneutical Austrians to blur that line was seen as a

perversion of Misesianism.

The debate began in the mid 1980s. As Lavoie (1994b: 54) described, ‚under the influence of

Ludwig M. Lachmann, several Austrian scholars, including Boettke, Ebeling, Horwitz, Lavoie,

Madison, Prychitko and Rector, have begun to challenge the traditional Austrian school from the

standpoint of hermeneutical philosophy.‛ In particular, the hermeneutical Austrians employed

the writings of Hans-Georg Gadamer and Paul Ricoeur. Most of the Austrian school, however,

never embraced hermeneutics. As Vaughn (1994: 133) wrote, ‚Hermeneutics is still considered

heresy by many Austrians. Some object on philosophical grounds that deny the applicability of

Continental philosophy to the Austrian tradition. Others decry the loss of the possibility of

theoretical certainty that hermeneutical economics engenders. Still others, I suspect, are most

worried that hermeneutics makes the old arguments for the unchallenged supremacy of the free

market open to challenge.‛

As debates go, however, this was an odd one. Rather than engage each other, the two sides

tended to talk past one another. There was none of the back and forth which typically

characterizes (even heated) debates in the social sciences. There was none of the point,

counterpoint, rejoinder, counter rejoinder that tends to occur when there are sharp scholarly

divisions. The ‚resistance‛ seemed angry enough, to be sure, but their criticisms were frequently

buckshot blasts aimed at hermeneutics broadly conceived and not the specific applications

proposed by the hermeneutical Austrians. Rothbard’s ‚The Hermeneutical Invasion of

Philosophy and Economics‛ (1989), for instance, is primarily a review of the unfortunate

influence of a diverse group of philosophers and a history of nihilism in economics before the

hermeneutical invasion. Although ‚the hermeneuticians in economics‛ clearly raised Rothbard’s

ire, he does not spend a lot of time refuting the arguments advanced by the group he describes ‚a

cluster of renegade Austrians and ex-Misesians‛ (ibid.: 56). For their part, the hermeneuticians

5 See Lavoie (1994b) for a discussion of the ‚interpretive turn‛ from the perspective of one of its

advocates.

6

seemed to restate and refine their arguments, ignoring the firestorm that they had set off. Lavoie

(1990a: 9), for instance, instead of answering the interpretive turn’s critics, dismissed them

because, in his view, they had ‚not shown a sophisticated appreciation of hermeneutics.‛

Ultimately, this was a ‚debate‛ that yielded very little. As Horwitz (2004: 251), himself a

participant in these debates, concedes, ‚rereading the various pieces from this period that were

central to the virulent debates only reinforced my own belief <that they were both

counterproductive and embarrassing for Austrian economics.‛ Given the almost visceral

negative reactions to calls for an ‚interpretive turn‛ in Austrian economics, it is clear that using

philosophical hermeneutics (whatever its virtues) to make these points (whatever their

importance) was a mistake. Schutz’s natural links to the Austrians and the affinity between

Schutz’s phenomenology and Mises’ praxeology would have made marshalling Schutz’s

philosophical pronouncements to advance these perspectives much more palatable. Indeed,

Schutz’s phenomenology can be thought of as an attempt to shore up Misesean praxeology by

undergirding it with a sound philosophical foundation. As Prendergast (1986: 3) shows,

‚Schutz’s earliest intellectual environment was dominated by the epistemological problems of the

Austrian school of economics, of which he was a member.‛ And, although ‚committed to the

school’s overall methodological standpoint,‛ as Prendergast (ibid.) argues, Schutz recognized its

‚inadequately justified components and < began to investigate alternative solutions.‛ Schutz,

as member of the Austrian school, would not have been subject to the same difficulties that

plagued Gadamer. The relevance of his phenomenology to Austrian concerns could not be called

into question.

Although the hermeneutical Austrians consistently made positive references to Schutz,6 there are

real limits to Schutz’s phenomenology which concerned them. Principally, their assessment of

the relative merits of Gadamer over Schutz was based on (amongst other things) the ability of

each to defend the use of theoretical lenses that may ascribe meaning to an individual’s actions

beyond the meanings that the individual attaches to his own actions (see Lavoie 1994b: 59).

Money, for instance, as Menger famously observed, is a product of human action but not of

human design. An economist’s observation that the actions of individuals, though not intending

6 See, for instance, Boettke (1990b and 1998) and Ebeling (1990).

7

it, were in reality creating money would need to go beyond the actors’ intentions in order to fully

understand the consequences of their actions. Although both Gadamer and Schutz would agree

with this move, Schutz’s philosophy does not really support it.7 Additionally, Schutz’s views on

the objective character of theoretical pronouncements and on the distinction between theory and

history are not consistent with the views of the hermeneutical Austrians (see, for instance, Lavoie

1994b and Lavoie & Storr 2001). Indeed, his support of the theory-history divide casts him as a

supporter (and not a critic like Gadamer) of an often repeated tenet in Mises’ methodological

writings.

Many of the philosophical controversies surrounding the interpretive turn do not dissolve by

employing Schutz rather than Gadamer. But, Schutz and the hermeneutical Austrians agree on

meaning and culture. The solutions that Schutz proposed, their inadequacies aside, do support

and help to clarify the notion that praxeology is a science of meaning and the use of qualitative

empirical methods. Gadamer’s hermeneutics may have avoided some of the pitfalls that plague

Schutz’s phenomenology but the advantages offered by Gadamer over Schutz were not critical to

many of the substantive arguments that the hermeneutical Austrians tried to advance. Schutz’s

discussions of the meaningfulness of human action, the inevitability of unintended consequences

and the significance of the social stock of knowledge in guiding our choices is a more than

adequate philosophical defense of the Austrian school’s positions on intentionality and

7 As Heckman (1986: 146-147) argues, ‚Both *Peter+ Winch and Schutz claim that the social

scientist must begin with the actors’ understanding of their actions, an understanding that both

define in terms of the intersubjective understandings constituted by the social context rather than,

with Dilthey, the subjective meanings of actors. Both also claim that the social scientist can then

go on to a further level of explanation as long as it presupposes this basic understanding. <

Schutz calls this level that of ‘second order concepts’ and insists that they meet the postulates of

subjective interpretation, rationality, adequacy and logical consistency. < The analyses of Winch

and Schutz as well as of those social scientists who have adopted their theoretical perspectives

have, in actual practice, rarely moved to this ‘second level’ of explanation despite the attempts on

the part of both Winch and Schutz to legitimize it. < Because both theorists insist on the

epistemological primacy of the actors’ constitution of meaning, it follows that any other construal

of meaning is necessarily suspect. < neither theorist offers any substantive justification for this

second level of conceptualization on the part of the social scientist. ... If the analysis of social

action is approached from the perspective provided by Gadamer’s hermeneutics, however, this

problem of legitimizing a ‘second level’ of explanation imposed by the interpreter is removed.‛

Gorman’s (1975 and 1977) critiques of Schutz’s methodological writings are also quite relevant

here. Also see Cotlar (1986).

8

thymology. As such, although Gadamer was arguably a better soldier than Schutz (from a

philosophical perspective), Schutz would have been a more natural recruit to advance these

particular arguments. The next sections explore the specific nature of Schutz’s arguments on the

role of meaning in praxeology and the proper approach to empirical work.

3. The Meaning in Austrian Economics

Praxeology is concerned with human action, that is, purposeful human behavior. The internal

machinations of the body, involuntary responses to stimuli, are not purposeful and so are not

within the scope of praxeology. To be sure, coughing or sneezing when there is an irritant

present, the spike in adrenalin which occurs at a stressful moment, the changes that take place in

our body’s cells during the course of our lives are all intelligible phenomena. But, these can rarely

be traced back to our plans or intentions. Action, as Mises (1963: 11) explains, ‚is will put into

operation and transformed into an agency < *it+ is the ego’s meaningful response to stimuli and

to the conditions of its environment.‛ Praxeology tries to make sense of these ‚meaningful

response*s+ to stimuli.‛ It explores how individual human action produces social phenomena like

the market and collective wholes like the family. It also seeks to explain not only the existence but

the behavior of these orders by analyzing the purposeful actions of individuals. As Mises (ibid.:

51) writes, the ‚the task of the sciences of human action is the comprehension of the meaning and

relevance of human action‛ (ibid.: 51). Consequently, praxeology must concern itself with the

ways that individuals conceive of their circumstances and their actions. It must concern itself

with subjective assessments. Praxeology is necessarily a science of meaning. Recall, as Mises

(2003: 141; italics added) notes, ‚conception,‛ which is the cognitive tool of praxeology, ‚seeks to

grasp the meaning of action through discursive reasoning.‛ And, as Mises (1963: 26) concluded,

‚we cannot approach our subject if we disregard the meaning which acting man attaches to [his]

situation.‛

This way of describing praxeology, however, is not without its difficulties. It is not entirely

obvious, for instance, what exactly we mean when we say that action is ‚the ego’s meaningful

response to stimuli.‛ Should we contrast this with the ego’s meaningless responses to stimuli?

Or, should we contrast the ego’s meaningful responses with the meaningful responses of other

parts of the body? Stated another way, is ‚ego‛ or is ‚meaningful‛ doing the work (of

9

distinguishing between action and non-action) in that formulation? Similarly, it is unclear what

we mean when we say that acting man ‚attaches‛ meaning to his circumstances and his own

behavior with regard to those circumstances. Is this ‚attaching‛ of meaning a deliberate process?

At which point does acting man ‚attach‛ meaning to a situation and his responses to that

situation? Is it before or after he acts? Is it while an action is occurring? If the meanings which

acting man ‚attaches‛ are varied and change over time, as would seem plausible, which meaning

is relevant for praxeology? Which meanings must we ‚refer to‛ and which can we ‚disregard‛?

Moreover, what ‚regard‛ should we pay to the meaning which acting man attaches to his

situation? In short, what does it mean to be a ‚science of meaning‛? What must we assume about

each other and our capabilities as scientists in order to get our ‚science of meaning‛ off of the

ground?

Although Mises wrote quite a lot on philosophical matters, he was primarily interested in

defending the scientific status of praxeological theories, highlighting the epistemological

differences between praxeology and history, and pointing out the value-free nature of

praxeological findings. He did not spend a lot of time exploring the meaning of meaning. This is

not surprising. Mises, after all, was an economist first and a philosopher second (and, then, only

when he felt he had to be one). Fortunately, Schutz’s effort to identify and explore the tacit

presumptions which form the basis of Max Weber’s ‚interpretive sociology,‛ is equally

therapeutic for Mises’ praxeology. Indeed, Schutz’s The Phenomenology of the Social World ([1932]

1967) can be read as an effort to address the ‚inadequately justified components‛ of Weber and

Mises’ shared project.

To say that a person’s experience has meaning, that it is a meaningful lived experience, Schutz

(ibid.: 41) informs, is to say that acting man has reflected upon it and isolated it ‚from the

abundance of experiences coexisting with it, preceding it, and following it‛ and, in so doing, has

constituted it as meaningful.8 As Schutz (ibid.: 71) explains, ‚the reflective glance signals out an

8 That the meaning of a lived experience can be different depending on when and from what

vantage point it is viewed, is perhaps the clearest indication that meaning has to do with

reflection. As Schutz (1967: 74) writes, ‚the meaning of a lived experience is different depending

on the moment from which the Ego is observing it. < its meaning is different depending upon the

temporal distance from which it is remembered and looked back upon. Likewise, the reflective

glance will penetrate more or less deeply into lived experience depending on its point of view.‛

10

elapsed lived experience and constitutes it as meaningful.‛ And, in constituting an item as

meaningful, the item is ‚selected out‛ and ‚rendered discrete by a reflexive act‛ (ibid.: 19).

Meaning then, in a generic sense, is a certain way of regarding an item or experience. ‚Meaning,‛

as Schutz (ibid. 42) points out, ‚is a certain way of directing one’s gaze at an item of one’s own

experience.‛

It becomes clear at this point that ‚meaningfulness,‛ contrary to Weber’s view, is not a useful

criteria for distinguishing between mere behavior and action (what Weber called ‚meaningful

behavior‛).9 In fact, Weber’s hope to separate out meaningful behavior (as rational, purposive

action) from purely emotional behavior and traditional/habitual behavior completely breaks

down when we think of meaning as a way of seeing an item.10 ‚It is useless to say that what

distinguishes action from behavior,‛ Schutz (ibid.: 19) writes, ‚is that the former is subjectively

meaningful and the latter meaningless. On the contrary, each is meaningful in its own way.‛ All

of my experiences can be selected out and distinguished from other experiences and so

constituted as meaningful, be they ‚purposive‛ in Weber’s sense or merely ‚automatic‛ reactions

to stimuli. In fact, even my involuntary responses to stimuli (e.g. coughing, sneezing, chocking,

etc.) can be isolated and made meaningful. As Schutz (ibid.) states, ‚when I look closely, I find

that none of my experiences is entirely devoid of meaning.‛11

What, then, is the difference between action and mere behavior? Can we draw any meaningful

distinctions between them? In which way are actions meaningful? According to Schutz (ibid.:

61), ‚action is the execution of a projected act” and “the meaning of any action is its corresponding

projected act.” A person acting rationally first chooses a goal or an end. He then imagines a

9 Recall that Weber has argued that ‚in [the category] ‘action’ is included all human behavior

when and in so far as the acting individual attaches a subjective meaning to it‛ (cited in Schutz

1967: 15).

10 Mises (2003: 88 - 92) has alternatively challenged Weber’s categories of action on the grounds

that all human action is purposeful, even habitual action which can seem automatic.

11 And, (Schutz 1967: 19) explained, ‚there is one fact which shows that most of my actions do

have meaning. This is the fact that, when I isolate them from the flux of experience and consider

them attentively, I then do find them to be meaningful in the sense that I am able to find in them

an underlying meaning.‛

11

completed act and that projection becomes the thing that he tries to bring about through action.

Consider, for example, my wanting to out of bed to go into the living room. ‚What is visible to

the mind,‛ Schutz (ibid.: 60) explains, ‚is the completed act, not the ongoing process that

constitutes it.‛ I do not count my steps before beginning to head to the living room nor do I, at

least at this initial stage, think of the obstacles I will encounter along the way (i.e. I do not see the

doors I will have to open, the furniture I will have to walk around, etc.). Instead, what I project

(at first) is ‘me in the living room.’ Next, I identify the means that are necessary to achieve the

desired ends and, perhaps, project those as intermediate goals. This process, Schutz (ibid.: 61)

explains, is a recognition of ‚a certain causal regularity‛ between the means available to me and

my particular goal. To continue with our example, I am able to conceive of a plan that gets me

from my bed to the living room because I am aware (through experience in this case) that lifting

myself from my bed, walking toward the bedroom door, opening said door and walking through

it will get me from the bed to the living room. An action (and the sub-actions which contribute to

bringing about a particular act), as Schutz (ibid.: 63) concludes, ‚are meaningless apart from the

project that defines it.‛

Although the ‚projected act‛ can be fairly thought of as ‚the meaning of an action,‛ reference to

the projected act only gives us the ‚in-order-to motive‛ of the action.12 As Schutz (ibid.: 89)

explains,

If, therefore, I give as the motive of my action that it is in-order-to-such-and-

such, what I really mean is the following: The action itself is only a means within

the meaning-context of the project, within which the completed act is pictured as

something to be brought to fulfillment by my action. Therefore, when asked

about my motive, I always answer in terms of ‚in-order-to‛ if the completed act

is still in the future.

But, the term ‚motive‛ can mean more than ‚the orientation of the action to the a future event‛

(ibid.: 87). It can also mean ‚its relation to a past lived experience‛ (ibid.). Stating that a

murderer committed murder for money is an ‚in-order-to‛ statement. Stating that a murderer

committed murder because he grew up under difficult circumstances is an altogether different

kind of statement. Although we are inclined, Schutz (ibid.:91) explained, to call this second

12 See Weigert (1975) for a critical exposition of Schutz’s theory of motivation.

12

statement an ‚explanation of the deed,‛ it is ultimately only a statement that ‚certain past

experiences of the murderer have created a disposition on the part of the murderer to achieve his

goals by violence rather than by honest labor.‛ The so-called ‚explanation of the deed‛ speaks to

the genuine because-motive of the action.

Determining the ‚genuine because-motive‛ of an action, as Schutz (ibid.: 95) points out, is a

backward looking effort.13 As Schutz (ibid.: 93) explains, ‚the formulation of a genuine why-

question is generally possible only after the motivated experience has occurred and when one

looks back on it as something whole and complete in itself.‛ Moreover, the motivating

experience must certainly be past at the time that a genuine because-statement is made. A future

event cannot be the genuine because-motive of a past event. As Schutz (ibid.) notes, ‚the

meaning-context of the true because-motive is thus always an explanation after the event.‛

Suppose, for instance, I say that the murderer killed his victim because his victim was going to

kill him at some later date. Notice that the ‚in-order-to motive‛ behind the murderer’s killing

was to prevent his own demise in the future. And, that the ‚because-motive‛ is not really his

impending doom but his past perception of the possibility of his future death. It is his prior

realization of the threat to his life and not his future death that motivated him to kill.

Identifying how meaning is constituted, however, does not tell us anything about its content nor

does it tell us anything about how, if at all, we can gain access to the ‚in-order-to motives‛ let

alone the ‚genuine because-motives‛ of others. There is, however, no method available to us

which we can follow in hopes of gaining access to the actual intended meanings of others, the

‚in-order-to‛ and ‚genuine because‛ motives of an actor as the actor understands them. As

Schutz (ibid.: 218) explains, ‚it is one thing to interpret one’s own experience and quite another to

interpret the experiences of someone else.‛ We have ‚direct‛ access to our own experiences. We

13 Characterizing ‚genuine because-statements‛ as referring necessarily to past projects

motivated by events that are even further past has huge implications for any delineation of the

scope and aim of praxeology (and history). Recall that Mises drew a sharp distinction between

praxeology and history. In Mises’ (1963: 51) view, praxeology employs conceptual cognition and

aims at explaining ‚what is necessary *and universal+ in human action.‛ History, on the other

hand, aims at understanding specific historical events. Recast in Schutzian language, providing

genuine because-statements is, thus, the province of historical sciences. Praxeology is an

interpretive frame that can, at best, reveal what Schutz called ‚pseudo-because motives.‛

13

only have access to the external signs, products and indications of each other’s lived experiences.

In order to interpret the experiences of someone else we have to begin with these signs and trace

them back to the subjective meanings of the other.14 This process of tracing signs back to

subjective meanings of the actor is not without its challenges. There is not a one to one mapping

between signs and meanings. Instead, ‚the subjective meaning that the interpreter does grasp is at

best an approximation to the <[individual’s] intended meaning, but never that meaning itself,

for one’s knowledge of another person’s perspective is always necessarily limited‛ (ibid.: 129).

Although our knowledge of another person’s perspective is limited, interpretation is nonetheless

possible because everyone’s actions belong to an ‚intersubjective world common to us all‛ (ibid.:

218).

The task of a science of action that aims at exploring the actions of others must attempt to

explicate the interpretive schemes that actors employ to understand their own acts and the stock

of knowledge from which they draw the subjective meanings of their actions.

4. Exploring the Social Stock of Knowledge

It is an open question how far we can get into any discussion of subjective meanings without

crossing from praxeology into history or without moving into economic sociology, which seems

to occupy a kind of middle ground.15 Conception, the cognitive tool of praxeology, necessarily

14

Schutz calls this tracing back a move from the objective meaning to the subjective. As he (1967:

217) writes, ‚it is only when I begin to grasp the other person’s point of view as such, or, in our

terminology, only when I make the leap from the objective to the subjective context of meaning,

that I am entitled to say that I understand him. < Now, we have already seen that all knowledge

of the subjective experiences of others must be obtained signitively. < we can start out from the

external sign itself and, regarding it as a product, trace it back to the original actions and

subjective experiences of its inventor or user. This is how, within the world of signs, the

transition is made from the objective to the subjective context of meaning.‛ I should note that

‚objective meaning,‛ for Schutz (ibid.: 31 and 33), can be defined both negatively (i.e. the

meaning of an act that’s different than the actors intended meaning) and positively (i.e. the

meaning of a sign or the product of an act that is intelligible in its on right). 15 Weber’s ‚universal histories‛ like his discussions of the city are representative of this category.

As Mises (2003: 114-115) explains, ‚In addition to excellent treatises on history, *Max Weber+

himself published extensive works that he termed sociological. We, of course, cannot recognize

their claim to this designation. <in their most important parts they are not sociological theory in

our sense. Nor are they history in the customary meaning of the term.‛

14

remains aloof to actual circumstances in the world and so cannot reveal much about actual

complexes of meanings and motives. As Mises (2003: 84) explains, ‚Concepts are never and

nowhere to be found in reality; they belong rather to the province of thought. They are the

intellectual means by which we seek to grasp reality in thought.‛ Praxeology aims at providing

universally valid truths. Although praxeology includes exercises in what Selgin (1988: 27) called

conjectural history (like Menger’s theory of the origin of money), praxeology can do little to reveal

the ‚intended meanings‛ of individuals.16 Praxeology can at most act as an interpretive scheme

for grasping actual human acts and point to the importance of focusing our applied studies on

meanings. Does a praxeology that stresses the importance of meaning recommend to us a

particular method of doing history? What kind of applied science complements our theoretical

positions?

Admittedly, this is a loaded way of putting this question. A theory of human action that stresses

meaning clearly calls for a history that tries to illuminate meanings.17 Not all approaches to doing

history meet this requirement. Indeed, Mises has been quite critical of several approaches to

doing history for failing to focus on the subjective meanings of individual actors. Mises, for

instance, has consistently pointed out the limits of quantitative approaches to doing applied

social science.18 Similarly, Mises has criticized historical methods that try to explain social

16 As Selgin (1988: 26-27) writes, ‚Of course, even pure economic theory is affected to some

degree by considerations of history. But these considerations mainly refer mainly to the problem

of whether a certain theory is relevant to a particular historical phenomenon under investigation.

< Other praxeological laws and theories rely upon lengthier chains of reasoning into which a

variety of assumptions enter. These are hypothetical-deductive theories: although their starting

point is the certain fact of purposefulness, the auxiliary assumptions involved may or may not

conform to any particular historical circumstance. Finally, praxeology includes exercises in

‘conjectural history’ in which reference is made to specific institutions (money, central banking),

circumstances (monopoly), and policies (tariffs, taxation).‛

17 As Mises (1985: 161) states, ‚If the historian refers to the meaning of a fact, he always refers

either to the interpretation acting men gave to the situation in which they had to live and to act,

and to the outcome of their ensuing actions, or to the interpretation which other people gave to

the result of these actions. The final causes to which history refers are always the ends

individuals and groups of individuals are aiming at.‛

18 Mises has consistently warned us against extrapolating general principles from econometric

details. At best, econometric results can serve as economic data that reveal only an aspect of

economic reality and needs to be interpreted and augmented by other historical detail. As Rizzo

15

phenomena without reference to individual plans and purposes or that describe the ‚march of

history‛ as being brought about by forces which supersede the intentions of individuals (see

Mises 1985: 159–165).19

Mises (1985: 264) has, however, endorsed thymological approaches, that is, approaches that focus

on ‚human emotions, motivations, ideas, *and+ judgments of value and volitions.‛ Moreover,

Mises has recognized that context has a lot to do with an individual’s motivations, ideas and

judgments. As he (ibid.: 159-160) writes,

Every individual is born into a definite social and natural milieu. An individual

is not simply man in general, whom history can regard in the abstract. An

individual is at any instant of his life the product of all the experiences to which

his ancestors were exposed plus those to which he himself has so far been

exposed. An actual man lives as a member of his family, his race, his people, and

his age; as a citizen of his country; as a member of a definite social group; as a

practitioner of a certain vocation. He is imbued with definite religious,

philosophical, metaphysical, and political ideas, which he sometimes enlarges or

modifies by his own thinking. His actions are guided by ideologies that he has

acquired through his environment.

History must attempt to describe these ‚ideologies‛ and the ‚environments‛ where these

‚ideologies‛ are acquired.

Schutz has stressed the importance of the ‚social stock of knowledge‛ in providing individuals

with ‚ideologies‛ (‚interpretive schemes,‛ ‚relevance systems,‛ ‚skills,‛ ‚useful knowledge‛ and

(1978: 53) writes, ‚econometrics ought to be only one tool in the apprehension of historical

phenomena. Clearly, not all issues of interest are quantifiable. If we try to explain complex

phenomena only by reference to quantifiable variables, then we are likely to be throwing away

some information that we do, indeed, have. Another danger is that we shall begin to identify

reality with statistical data when, in fact, it is just one aspect of reality, a particular transformation

of more elementary experience.‛

19 Indeed, not all historical methods can reveal the experience of individuals-in-the-world. As I

argued elsewhere (Boettke et al. 2004: 346-347), ‚ordinary experience is interconnected and

embedded in a temporal world. Econometric models, however, necessarily aggregate and always

abstract from the temporal dimension of human interaction. Aggregation, as is often pointed out,

abstracts from the heterogeneous and context-specific character of individual interactions.

Ordinary experience, on the other hand, takes place in certain places at specific times. And, even

time series analysis treats time statically < Relationships are (necessarily) not allowed to change

and units of time are (typically) treated as discrete. The mainstream by failing to begin in the

world is simply unable to return to it.‛

16

‚recipes‛ in Schutz’s language).20 As Schutz and Luckmann (1973: 100) explain, ‚each situation

[that individuals encounter and experience in the everyday life-world] is defined and mastered

with the help of the stock of knowledge.‛ An individual’s ‚subjective stock of knowledge‛

contains everything that he has ‚learned‛ over the course of his life; how to walk, talk, read, ride

a bicycle, drive a car, relate to his friends and colleagues, program a computer, reason like an

economist; what his capabilities are and his limitations; what is appropriate and inappropriate in

a variety of the circumstances; what is typically relevant and what is usually irrelevant in

various situation; which phenomena he should view as common and which uncommon; his own

life history, the stories he was told as a child, what he gained through interacting with his

fellows; the customs and folklore of his community. When an event occurs or he is confronted

with a (novel or not so novel) state of affairs, he draws on his subjective stock of knowledge as he

define his circumstances and decides his path.

Although some of an individual’s subjective stock of knowledge was developed as a result of his

own experiences in the life-world, much of it was derived from the social stock of knowledge. As

Schutz and Luckmann (1973: 254) explain, ‚when the individual enters into a situation, he brings

with him a biographically modeled, and to a large extent socially derived, stock of knowledge.‛

And, ‚the subjective stock of knowledge consists only in part of ‘independent’ results of

experience and explication. It is predominantly derived from elements of the social stock of

knowledge‛ (ibid.: 262).

All social knowledge, Schutz and Luckmann (ibid.: 262) point out, is the result of the ‚subjective

acquisition of knowledge‛ that occurs through experience in the life-world. The social stock of

knowledge, however, contains both ‚more‛ than the sum of each individual’s subjective stock

and ‚less‛ than each individual’s subjective stock. ‚More‛ in the sense that no person in any

20 I should note that the book where this concept is developed was completed after Schutz’s death

by his co-author and former student Thomas Luckmann. As Schutz’s biographer Barber (2004:

220) describes, ‚On the basis of Schutz’s manuscripts (in the form of notebooks) Thomas

Luckmann brought The Structure of the Life-World to its final form < Luckmann < altered

Schutz’s plans, expanding a section on typifications in the third chapter on the subjective stock of

knowledge [and+ producing an entirely new chapter, the fourth, on knowledge and society.‛ The

arguments presented in these sections, however, draws heavily on Schutz’s work in this area and

fit neatly into his body of work. See Schutz (1967: 78-83) for Schutz’s on writings on the stock of

knowledge at hand.

17

community is in possession of all of that community’s social stock of knowledge; there’s a social

distribution of knowledge (ibid.: 264). ‚Less‛ in the sense that the individual’s subjective stock of

knowledge contains elements that were acquired during novel or unique experiences and so do

not make their way into the social stock of knowledge (ibid.).

In many respects, the social stock of knowledge can be thought of as culture. Although the term

culture has been used to describe everything from high art to attitudes, it has been profitably

defined by Clifford Geertz as ‚webs of significance‛ in which man is suspended and which ‚he

himself has spun‛ (Geertz 1973: 5). ‚As interworked systems of construable signs,‛ Geertz (ibid:

14) explains, ‚culture is not a power, something to which social events, behaviors, institutions, or

processes can be causally attributed; it is a context, something within which they can be

intelligibly – that is, thickly – described.‛ Culture is an environment, a backdrop where certain

events are intelligible, understandable, and possible, while others are not. It is also fairly thought

of as a collection of meanings that we received from our predecessors. As Geertz (ibid.: 89)

writes, ‚it denotes an historically transmitted pattern of meanings < a system of inherited

conceptions < by means of which men communicate, perpetuate, and develop their knowledge

about and attitudes toward life.‛

Like the social stock of knowledge, cultural systems have both moral and cognitive aspects,

recipes for deciding between good and bad and ways of thinking about the world. A cultural

system is comprised of a people’s ethos and their world view. As Geertz (ibid.: 127) explains,

A people’s ethos is the tone, character, and quality of their life, its moral and

aesthetic style and mood; it is the underlying attitude toward themselves and

their world that life reflects. Their world view is their picture of the way things

in sheer actuality are, their concept of nature, of self, of society. It contains their

most comprehensive ideas of order.

A people’s ethos and world view are mutually supporting within a cultural system. An ethos

typically justifies a world view. A worldview typically explains an ethos. For instance,

communities where a strong work ethic is evident frequently have members who believe that

people can succeed through hard work.21 As Geertz (ibid.) states, ‚the ethos is made

21 See Storr (2004) for analytical narrative that speaks to the mutually reinforcing nature of a

people’s ethos and world view.

18

intellectually reasonable by being shown to represent a way of life implied by the actual state of

affairs which the world view describes, and the world view is made emotionally acceptable by

being presented as an image of an actual state of affairs of which such a way of life is an authentic

expression.‛

If a history aimed at grasping meaning must attempt to describe the social stock of knowledge

and, additionally, the social stock of knowledge can be reasonably thought of as being kin to

culture, then thick descriptions (i.e., qualitative social history and ethnography) become the

favored approaches.22 Social historians and ethnographers must attempt to ‚see things from the

native’s point of view.‛23 This should not be seen as a mandate to perform impossible

psychological feats nor as a requirement that we qua applied social scientists have to posses

extraordinary capacities for empathy and self projection. Instead, as Geertz (1983: 57) explains,

the aim is

<to produce an interpretation of the way a people lives which is neither

imprisoned within their mental horizons, an ethnography of witchcraft as

written by the witch, nor systematically deaf to the distinctive tonalities of their

existence, an ethnography of witchcraft as written by a geometer.24

‚Seeing things from the native’s point of view‛ suggests that we try to gain insight into how

people see their own selves and situations by mining their archives, reading their literature,

listening to their folklore and praise songs, conducting interviews, and living amongst them. But,

it also insists that we situate and explain those ‚experience-near concepts‛ with the aid of

‚experience-distant concepts‛ from our praxeological toolkit, our systems for classification, our

sets of generalities and abstractions. The ethnographers task is not to put ‚oneself into someone

else’s skin‛ but ‚to grasp concepts that, for another people, are experience-near, and to do so well

22 History along Weberian-Misesian-Schutzian lines will also employ ideal types. See, for

instance, Mises (1963: 59-64).

23 By native, Geertz simply means the individual that is being studied.

24 ‚Confinement to experience-near concepts [or concepts that the native might employ to explain

his actions+,‛ Geertz (1983: 57) explains, ‚leaves an ethnographer awash in immediacies, as well

as entangled in vernacular. Confinement to experience-distant ones [or concepts that specialists

or scientists use+ leaves him stranded in abstractions and smothered in jargon.‛

19

enough to place them in illuminating connection with experience-distant concepts theorists have

fashioned to capture the general features of social life‛ (ibid.: 58).

This approach to applied work is not altogether foreign in Austrian circles. The hermeneutical

Austrians, for their part, produced a handful of analytical narratives aimed at explaining and

understanding the native’s point of view. Chamlee-Wright’s (1997) ethnographic study of

market women in Ghana is perhaps the gold standard in this regard.25 In her effort to tease out

the relationship between culture and economic development, Chamlee-Wright mixes abstract

discussions about the role of entrepreneurship in the market process and the ways that culture

can impact entrepreneurship with detailed descriptions of Ghana’s sometimes haunting past and

accounts of the cultural and social milieu where Akan female entrepreneurs live and trade (often

using the traders’ own words to describe their challenges and opportunities). The former (the

Austrian theory of entrepreneurship and cultural economics) serving as an ‚interpretive scheme‛

for understanding the latter (Ghanaian economic history and economic culture).

Boettke’s (1990a) analysis of the first decade of Soviet history, though not a cultural tale per se,

similarly focuses on the native’s perspective. Boettke (ibid.: 5) wants to overturn the ‚standard

account‛ of that era which cannot explain the complete failure of ‚War Communism‛ (1918-1921)

which instituted collective ownership of the means of production nor the ‚relative success‛ of the

‚New Economic Policy‛ (1921-1928) which restored private property in some sectors of the

economy. Using the Austrian critique of socialism and focusing on the writings of Lenin,

Bukharin and other Soviet leaders, Boettke demonstrates that theirs was attempt to

comprehensively plan the economy according to Marxian theory and that the failure of ‚War

Communism‛ was, thus, inevitable.

There have been more recent attempts (in the hermeneutical economics tradition) to tell these

kinds of tales combining an Austrian economics analytical framework with qualitative social

history and ethnography. My Enterprising Slaves and Master Pirates (2004), for instance, was an

25 Chamlee-Wright, though not a participant in the hermeneutics debates, was a student and co-

author of Don Lavoie, one of the leading proponents of the interpretive turn. Indeed, Culture and

Enterprise (2001) which she co-authored with Lavoie and her Cultural Foundations of Economic

Development (1997) confirm her as a member of that camp.

20

attempt to tell the economic history of the Bahamas by focusing on how culture impacts

entrepreneurship in that context. Similarly, the Mercatus Center’s ‚Enterprise Africa‛ and

‚Crisis, Preparedness, and Response in the Wake of Katrina‛ projects can be thought of as efforts

in applied Austrian economics that largely rely on oral histories and ethnographies (see, for

instance, Boudreaux 2006 and Chamlee-Wright and Storr 2009). Although many of these studies

were self-consciously influenced by philosophical hermeneutics, it is my contention is that Schutz

like Gadamer puts us on a sound philosophical foundation for pursuing these kinds of empirical

studies.

5. Conclusion

Praxeology must be a science of meaning. If our goal is grasp human action then we have no

choice but to focus on the ways that our subjects conceived of their circumstances and must

necessarily refer to the plans and motivations that prompted their behavior. Mises concluded as

much. Having defined human action as ‚the ego’s meaningful response to stimuli and to the

conditions of its environment‛ (Mises 1963: 11), he stressed that ‚we cannot approach our subject

if we disregard the meaning which acting man attaches to the situation‛ (ibid.: 26).

The hermeneutical economists tried to buttress Austrian economics’ claim to being a science of

meaning with the help of Gadamer. This was an understandable if controversial and ultimately

problematic move. First, they (rightly) believed, that Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics was

consistent with much of Austrian economics. As Lavoie (1994b: 56) writes, the hermeneutical

Austrian economist agrees with his non-hermeneutical brethren that ‚doing economics the

Austrian way is tracing systemic (spontaneous order) patterns of events to the (subjectively)

meaningful purposes of (individual) human actors.‛ Second, they (controversially) believed that,

where Gadamer and Mises disagreed, Gadamer was on the sounder philosophical footing. The

Austrian school, they believed, risked ‚atomism‛ by failing to follow subjectivism to its natural

end (i.e. a focus on the intersubjective). And, it risked scientism by drawing too indelible a line

between theory and history (i.e. failing to grasp that praxeology was also about understanding).

Although I remain persuaded by the hermeneutic critique of some of the Austrian school’s

methodological pronouncements, I also believe that the fight along the lines of the one that they

21

triggered was largely wasteful. The debate over the a priori character of praxeological statements

is a case in point. The difference between my being certain that our theories are objectively true

or my believing that it is impossible for me to know ‚for certain‛ but nonetheless proceeding as if

they are true is the arguably a philosophical distinction without a practical difference. Moreover,

the disagreement over this and a few of the other controversial aspects of the ‚interpretive turn‛

that the hermeneutical Austrians were championing obscured what were perhaps the most

important (and certainly the less controversial) contributions that a Gadamerian hermeneutics

might make to praxeology. First, an exposition of what we really mean when we say that

praxeology is a science of meaning. Second, an endorsement of a particular kind of applied social

science to complement our well developed theoretical apparatus. Schutz, as I tried to

demonstrate above, would have enabled the hermeneutical Austrians to make many of the same

points that they made about the meaning of meaning and the importance of focusing on culture,

while allowing them to sidestep much of the firestorm that they sparked.

22

Bibliography

Augier, Mie 1995. ‘Some Notes on Alfred Schutz and the Austrian School of Economics: Review

of Alfred Schutz’s Collected Papers, Vol. IV. Edited by H. Wagner, G. Psathas and F. Kersten

(1996),’ Review of Austrian Economics 11: 145-162.

Austrian Economics Newsletter 1990. ‘The Science of Liberty: An Interview with Murray N.

Rothbard.’

Austrian Economics Newsletter 1991. ‘An Interview with Leland Yeager.’

Barber, Michael D. 2004. The Participating Citizen: A Biography of Alfred Schutz. New York, NY:

State University of New York Press.

Boettke, Peter J. 1990a. The Political Economy of Soviet Socialism: The Formative Years, 1918-1928.

Boston, MA: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

Boettke, Peter J. 1990b. ‘Interpretive Reasoning and the Study of Social Life.’ Methodus, 2 no. 2.

Boettke, Peter J. 1998. ‘Rational Choice and Human Agency in Economics and Sociology:

Exploring the Weber-Austrian Connection’ in Merits and Limits of Markets ed. Herbert Giersch

(New York, NY: Springer).

Boettke, Peter J. and Virgil H. Storr 2002. ‘Post Classical Political Economy: Polity, Society and

Economy in Weber, Mises and Hayek.’ American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 61 no. 1.

Boettke, Peter J., Don Lavoie and Virgil H. Storr 2004. ‘The subjectivist methodology of

Austrian economics, and Dewey’s theory of inquiry,’ in Dewey, Pragmatism, and Economic

Methodology ed. Elias L. Khalil (New York, NY: Routledge).

Boudreaux, Karol 2006. ‘Seeds of Hope: Agricultural Technologies and Poverty Alleviation in

Rural South Africa,’ Mercatus Policy Series, Policy Comment no. 6.

23

Chamlee-Wright, Emily 1997. The Cultural Foundations of Economic Development: Urban Female

Entrepreneurship in Ghana. New York, NY: Routledge.

Chamlee-Wright, Emily and Virgil Henry Storr 2009.

Cotlar, Andrew Howard 1986. ‚The relation between sociological method and everyday life:

Weber, Husserl, Schutz, and Gadamer,‛ Unpublished Dissertation.

Ebeling, Richard 1990. ‘What is a price? Explanation and understanding (with apologies to Paul

Ricoeur)’ in Economics and Hermeneutics ed. D. Lavoie (New York, NY: Routledge).

Foss, N.J. 1996. ‚Spontaneous Social Order: Economics and Schutzian Sociology,‛ American

Journal of Economics and Sociology 55: 73-86.

Gadamer, Hans-Georg 1976. Philosophical Hermeneutics. Berkeley, CA: University of Califonia

Press.

Gadamer, Hans-Georg [1960] 1989. Truth and Method. New York: Crossroad.

Geertz, Clifford 1973. The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays. New York, NY: Basic Books.

Geertz, Clifford 1983. Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology. New York, NY:

Basic Books.

Gordon, David 1986. ‚Hermeneutics Vs. Austrian Economics, ‛ Ludwig von Mises Institute

Working Papers Series (Auburn, Ala.).

Gorman, Robert A. 1975. ‚Alfred Schutz – An Exposition and Critique, ‛ The British Journal of

Sociology 26 (1).

Gorman, Robert A. 1977. The Dual Vision: Alfred Schutz and the myth of phenomenological social

science. Boston, MA: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Heckman, Susan J. 1986. Hermeneutics & the Sociology of Knowledge. Notre Dame, IN: University

of Notre Dame Press.

24

Hoppe, Hans-Hermann 1989. ‘In Defense of Extreme Rationalism: Thoughts on Donald

McCloskey’s The Rhetoric of Economics,’ The Review of Austrian Economics 3.

Horwitz, Steven 1995. ‘Monetary Exchange as an Extra-linguistic Social Communication Process’

in Individuals, Institutions, Interpretations ed. D.L. Prychitko (Burlington: Ashgate Publishing

Company).

Horwitz, Steven 2004. ‘From Revival to Flourishing: Thirty Years of the Austrian School,’ The

Journal of Economic Methodology 11 (2): 249-261.

Koppl, Roger 1997. ‘Mises and Schutz on Ideal Types,‛ Cultural Dynamics 9(1): 63-79.

Kurrild-Klitgaard, Peter 2003. ‘The Viennese Connection: Alfred Schutz and the Austrian

School,‛ The Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics 6 (2): 35-67.

Lachmann, Ludwig M. 1971. The Legacy of Max Weber. Berkeley: Glendessary Press.

Lachmann, Ludwig M. 1977. Capital, Expectations, and the Market Process: Essays on the Theory of

the Market Economy. Kansas City, Kansas: Sheed Andrews and McMeel, Inc.

Lachmann, Ludwig M. 1978. Capital and Its Structure. Kansas City, Kansas: Sheed Andrews and

McMeel, Inc.

Lachmann, Ludwig M. 1994. Expectations and the Meaning of Institutions: Essays in Economics by

Ludwig Lachmann. London: Routledge.

Lavoie, Don 1987. ‘The Accounting of Interpretations and the Interpretation of Accounts: The

Communicative Function of ‚The Language of Business.‛’ Accounting, Organizations and Society

12: 579-604.

Lavoie, Don 1990a. Economics and Hermeneutics. London, UK: Routledge.

Lavoie, Don 1990b. ‘Hermeneutics, Subjectivity, and the Lester/Machlup Debate: Toward a More

Anthropological Approach to Empirical Economics’ in Economics as Discourse ed. W. Samuels

(Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishing).

25

Lavoie, Don 1990c. ‘Understanding Differently: Hermeneutics and the Spontaneous Order of

Communicative Processes.’ History of Political Economy, Annual Supplement to 22: 359-377.

Lavoie, Don 1991a. ‘The Discovery and Interpretation of Profit Opportunities: Culture and the

Kirznerian Entrepreneur’ in The Culture of Entrepreneurship ed. B. Berger (San Francisco: CA: ICS

Press).

Lavoie, Don 1991b. ‘The Progress of Subjectivism’ in Appraising Economic Theories: Studies in the

Methodology of Research Programs ed. N. De Marchi and M. Blaug (Aldershot: Edward Elgar).

Lavoie, Don 1994a. ‘Cultural Studies and the Conditions for Entrepreneurship’ in The Cultural

Context of Economics and Politics ed. T.W. Boxx and G.M. Quinlivan (Lanham: University Press of

America, Inc.).

Lavoie, Don 1994b. ‘The interpretive turn’ in The Elgar Companion to Austrian Economics ed. Peter

J. Boettke (Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar).

Lavoie, Don 1995a. ‘The market as a procedure for the discovery and conveyance of inarticulate

knowledge’ in Individuals, Institutions, Interpretations ed. D.L. Prychitko (Burlington: Ashgate

Publishing Company).

Lavoie, Don and Emily Chamlee-Wright 2001. Culture And Enterprise: The Development,

Representation, and Morality of Business (New York, NY: Routledge).

Lavoie, Don and Virgil Storr 2001. ‘As a Consequence of Meaning: Rethinking the Relationship

between Thymology and Praxeology,’ Working Paper.

Mises, Ludwig von. [1933] 2003. Epistemological Problems of Economics. Auburn, AL: Ludwig von

Mises Institute.

Mises, Ludwig von. [1949] 1963. Human Action: A Treatise on Economics. Third Revised Edition. San

Francisco, CA: Fox & Wilkes.

26

Mises, Ludwig von. [1957] 1985. Theory and History: An Interpretation of Social and Economic

Evolution. Auburn, AL: The Ludwig von Mises Institute.

Mises, Ludwig von. [1962] 2006. The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science: An Essay on Method.

Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund.

Prendergast, Christopher 1986. ‘Alfred Schutz and the Austrian School of Economics,’ The

American Journal of Sociology 92 (1): 1-26.

Prychitko, David L. 1995. Individuals, Institutions, Interpretations: Hermeneutics Applied to

Economics. Burlington: Ashgate Publishing Company.

Ricouer, Paul 1976. Interpretation Theory: Discourse and the Surplus of Meaning. Fort Worth: Texas

Christian University Press.

Rizzo, Mario 1978. ‘Praxeology and Econometrics: A Critique of Positivist Economics’ in New

Directions in Austrian Economics ed. L. Spadaro (Kansas City: Sheed Andrews and McMeel, Inc.).

Rothbard, Murray N. 1989. ‘The Hermeneutical Invasion of Philosophy and Economics,’ Review

of Austrian Economics, 3: 45-60.

Peritore, N. Patrick 1975. ‘Some Problems in Alfred Schutz’s Phenomenological Methodology,’

The American Political Science Review 69 (1).

Schutz, Alfred 1962. Collected Papers, Vol I. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

Schutz, Alfred 1964. Collected Papers, Vol II. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

Schutz, Alfred 1966. Collected Papers, Vol III. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Schutz, Alfred 1996. Collected Papers, Vol IV. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Schutz, Alfred [1932] 1967. The Phenomenology of the Social World. Evanston: Northwestern

University Press.

Schutz, Alfred and Thomas Luckmann 1973. The Structures of the Life-World. Evanston, IL:

Northwestern University Press.

27

Schutz, Alfred and Thomas Luckmann [1983] 1989. The Structures of the Life-World: Volume II.

Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.

Selgin, G.A. 1988. ‘Praxeology and Understanding: An Analysis of the Controversy in Austrian

Economics,’ The Review of Austrian Economics 2.

Storr, Virgil Henry 2004. Enterprising Slaves and Master Pirates: Understanding Economic Life in the

Bahamas. New York, NY: Peter Lang.

Vaughn, Karen I. 1994. Austrian Economics in America: The Migration of a Tradition. Cambridge,

UK: Cambridge University Press.

Weigert, Andrew J. 1975. ‘Alfred Schutz on a Theory of Motivation,’ The Pacific Sociological

Review 18 (1).