Philosophy and Methodology

Presented at Mises University 2019.

Patrick Deneen lumps everything he dislikes under the label of "liberalism." But one is left wondering if he is familiar enough with liberalism's history to pass judgment on it.

The workers were never enthusiastic about socialism. Socialism was brought to the masses by intellectuals of bourgeois background, dining and wining together in the luxurious London homes and country seats of late Victorian "society."

The praxeological method was the basic method of the earlier Austrian school and also of a considerable segment of the older classical school.

Efficiency is backward-looking and static, while value creation is future-oriented and aspirational. 

"He loved liberty as other men love power," was the judgment passed on Benjamin Constant by a contemporary. His lifelong concern, both as a writer and politician, was the growth of human freedom. 

Austrian economics diverges in several important ways from that followed by our colleagues in the mainstream of the profession.

John Locke was ridiculed for suggesting that people "consent" to their government by not emigrating. Hume suggested this theory could be used to claim consent for even the most outrageous tyrants.

The experience with which the sciences of human action have to deal is always an experience of complex phenomena. No laboratory experiments can be performed with regard to human action.

People criticized economics and said “well, there’s something wrong with Austrian economics because it doesn’t depend on verifying things empirically,” Mises wanted to come up with a reply to that, so that was what really got him into philosophy.