THE ORIGIN OF LUDWIG VON MISES’ PRAXEOLOGY: IS A NOMOTHETIC AND ANTINATURALISTIC SOCIAL SCIENCE POSSIBLE?

THE ORIGIN OF LUDWIG VON MISES’ PRAXEOLOGY: IS A NOMOTHETIC AND ANTINATURALISTIC SOCIAL SCIENCE POSSIBLE?

João M. T. Costa (PUC-SP)

This study examines Ludwig von Mises’ original project of establishing a general science of action (Praxeology), situating it within the intellectual currents of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It focuses on Mises’ engagement with three decisive influences: Carl Menger and the Austrian School, the Baden Neo-Kantians, and Max Weber, showing how he simultaneously inherits, transforms, and reacts to these traditions in crafting an epistemological and methodological framework for the social sciences, and particularly for Economics. The core tension of his project lies in seeking a nomothetic, universally valid science while maintaining an explicitly anti-naturalistic stance.

The backdrop for Mises’ project is the original Methodenstreit, the debate between Gustav Schmoller’s historicist approach and Menger’s a priori conception of Economics. This controversy not only shaped the Austrian School’s methodological self-understanding but also reflected broader disputes among followers of Wilhelm Dilthey and Franz Brentano. Mises positioned himself as a defender of universally valid economic theory against Schmoller’s relativism, while radicalizing Menger’s project by exploring the full implications of his theory of subjective value.

Menger conceived economics as the study of agents’ specific, strictly economic responses to scarcity. His science rested on descriptive psychological insights regarding human needs and the means employed to satisfy them. From these foundations emerges a complex, interrelated structure of categories such as goods, scarcity, value, exchange, prices, money, and so on, that constitute the objects of economic analysis. While this conceptual web is exact in structure, its empirical grounding leaves room for contingency (namely, what would be non-economic forms of action), limiting its claim to universality.

Mises identifies this as a vulnerability. For him, the fundamental categories of action do not derive fom psychology but from the logical structure of purposeful conduct itself. They are not empirical generalizations but necessary conditions for the understanding of human action. In doing so, he seeks to preserve Menger’s exactitude while eliminating the contingency that constrains universality.

This distinction also clarifies Mises’ divergence from Weber. While Weber employs ideal types as heuristic tools and distinguishes between rational and non-rational types of conduct, Mises accepts ideal types heuristically but rejects the idea of non-rational action. Just as in Menger, fragmenting rationality or positing non-rational action undermines the soundness of theories which adhere to subjective valuation as their basis. Unlike Weber, who treats economics as a historically conditioned subset of social life, Mises’ framework derives universality from the logical structure of action itself, applicable across contexts.

Mises further shares with Weber, as well as with the Neo-Kantians, the recognition that social sciences cannot adopt the methods of the natural sciences. Human action is meaningful precisely because it is purposive; its study requires a conceptual, rather than experimental, approach. Praxeology respects the interpretive nature of social phenomena while seeking systematic knowledge grounded in the necessary conditions of action.

In sum, Mises’ praxeology emerges as a distinctive synthesis. It draws on Menger’s theory of action under conditions of scarcity, as it critically engages with Weber’s comprehensive sociology, and responds to Neo-Kantian reflections on inquiries over human affairs versus over nature. Departing from Menger’s psychological orientation, it replaces empirical basis with a transcendental analysis of action. The result is a conceptual science that claims universality and necessity without mimicking empirical reality directly, producing categories that render human conduct intelligible across historical and social contexts and providing a foundation for all sciences of human action, from History to Economics.