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Re: Franz Oppenheimer's Methodology and Economics?

Vichy Army — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 08:11:20 GMT

Barry Smith is really awesome, I have been meaning to read that book (and Dave Gordon's similar book) for some time now.

His lectures on ontology are also quite good. He talks about de Soto in this one.

Re: Franz Oppenheimer's Methodology and Economics?

E. R. Olovetto — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 03:50:46 GMT

I was just searching around today for stuff on Verstehen, and Dilthey was mentioned here. (pg. 27, but you may as well read from (vi) on the preceding page)

I'm not quite sure I get Dilthey from that short passage, but there is probably more in the rest of Smith's book, which I haven't gotten around to reading. I'm not sure how the rejection of (vi), basically Aristotlean essentialism, can stand up to things like Husserl's "argument from translatibility". That is that the selfsame logical sense of a proposition, no matter what language it is asserted in, obtains in a singular way rather than being multiplied by various persons and acts.

You are probably familiar with this, but people should remember it. Although, I believe, Mises mentions that Verstehen is a unique form of (historical) understanding. He continues to use the word "understanding" later on and is referring to Verstehen, rather than some other German terms that would be similarly translated like erkennenden Akten (also "apprehension"). An example of this would be here, a fairly important passage to me, where Mises distinguishes ideal types from praxeological categories.

IIRC, Dilthey had some influence on Gadamer as well. I generally disagree with this branch of phenomenology, but there are some worthwhile parts to it. Anyhow, these perceived problems aren't apparent to me as I am skimming through Oppenheimer's work and it looks worth reading.

Re: Franz Oppenheimer's Methodology and Economics?

Vichy Army — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 02:47:03 GMT

Fixed your link Liberte. I forget what I read about this guy and it is bugging me now. Why do you say that he is an a priorii sociologist?

Aside from just reading his work, Oppenheimer was influenced strongly by Wilhelm Dilthey (also by some of the Austrians on various points).

On Dilthey:

Dilthey strongly rejected using a model formed exclusively from the natural sciences (Naturwissenschaften), and instead proposed developing a separate model for the human sciences (Geisteswissenschaften). His argument centered around the idea that in the natural sciences we seek to explain phenomena in terms of cause and effect, or mechanism of composing parts; in contrast, in the human sciences, we seek to understand (“Verstehen”) or “interpret.”

Re: Franz Oppenheimer's Methodology and Economics?

E. R. Olovetto — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 02:18:06 GMT

Fixed your link Liberte. I forget what I read about this guy and it is bugging me now. Why do you say that he is an a priorii sociologist?

Re: Franz Oppenheimer's Methodology and Economics?

Vichy Army — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 02:10:42 GMT

I do believe I heard him mentioned before as a left anarchist, I believe he influenced a good deal of market socialists as well. Here is a link to his History and Sociology http://www.franz-oppenheimer.de/fo27b.htm and a piece on economics http://www.franz-oppenheimer.de/fo43a.htm from wikipedia, it also says he earned his doctorate with a thesis on David Ricardo.

Awesome, looks interesting :)

Re: Franz Oppenheimer's Methodology and Economics?

Alex Habighorst — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 19:38:53 GMT

I do believe I heard him mentioned before as a left anarchist, I believe he influenced a good deal of market socialists as well. Here is a link to his History and Sociology http://www.franz-oppenheimer.de/fo27b.htm and a piece on economics http://www.franz-oppenheimer.de/fo43a.htm from wikipedia, it also says he earned his doctorate with a thesis on David Ricardo.

Franz Oppenheimer's Methodology and Economics?

Vichy Army — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 15:36:57 GMT

Reading his essay on the State, Oppenheimer seems to be an a priori sociologist. I have also heard he was something of an odd leftist. Does anyone know any resources on his methodological and economic views?