Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-5r2nc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-10T06:15:03.307Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Postmodern Moments of F. A. Hayek'S Economics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 December 2008

Theodore A. Burczak
Theodore A. Burczak
Affiliation:
Dickinson College
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Postmodernism is often characterized, among other things, as the belief in the unattainability of objective truth and as a rejection of teleological and reductionist, or essentialist, forms of thought. For instance, in his provocative book The Rhetoric of Economics (1985), Donald McCloskey sketches the implications for economic methodology of Richard Rorty's (1979) rejection of the modernist quest for Truth, as represented by various rationalist and empiricist epistemologies. McCloskey describes modernist methodology as displaying a desire to predict and control, a search for objective–;which often means measurable–;knowledge, and an attempt to develop a value-free inquiry, among other characteristics (McCloskey, 1985, pp. 7-8). This “methodological correctness,” McCloske suggests, is discredited by the postmodern dissatisfaction with traditional epistemology. Thus, in place of the modernist belief in a rule-guided path to truth, he advocates a “free market” approach to knowledge, in which participants in the variety of theoretical conversations agree to be earnest and listen politely to one another.

Type
Essays
Information
Economics & Philosophy , Volume 10 , Issue 1 , April 1994 , pp. 31 - 58
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1994

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Althusser, Louis. 1969. For Marx. New York: Pantheon.Google Scholar
Althusser, Louis. 1976. Essays in Self-Criticism, trans. Grahame, Lock. London: New Left Books.Google Scholar
Amariglio, Jack. 1988. “The Body, Economic Discourse, and Power: An Economist's Introduction to Foucault.” History of Political Economy 20(4):583–613.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Amariglio, Jack. 1990. “Economics as a Postmodern Discourse.” In Economics as Discourse, edited by Warren, Samuels, pp. 15–46. Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers..CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Becker, Gary. 1976. The Economic Approach to Human Behavior. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berlin, Isiah. 1958. Two Concepts of Liberty. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Buchanan, James, and Viktor, Vanberg. 1991. “The Market as a Creative Process.” Economics and Philosophy 7:167–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crotty, James. 1993. “Are Keynesian Uncertainty and Macrotheory Compatible? Conventional Decision Making, Institutional Structures, and Conditional Stability in Keynesian Macromodels.” Forthcoming in Macroeconomics on the Minsky Frontier, edited by Pollin, R and Dymski, G. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Ebeling, Richard. 1986. “Toward a Hermeneutical Economics: Expectations, Prices, and the Role of Interpretation in the Theory of the Market.” In Subjectivism, Intelligibility and Economic Understanding, edited by Israel, Kirzner, pp. 39–52. New York: New York University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frank, Jerome. 1970. Law and the Modern Mind. Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith.Google Scholar
Hayek, Friedrich A. 1931. Prices and Production. London: Routledge and Sons.Google Scholar
Hayek, Friedrich A. 1948. Individualism and Economic Order. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Hayek, Friedrich A. 1948a. “Individualism: True and False.” In Hayek (1948):l–32.Google Scholar
Hayek, Friedrich A. 1948b. “The Use of Knowledge in Society.” In Hayek (1948):77–91.Google Scholar
Hayek, Friedrich A. 1948c. “Economics and Knowledge.” In Hayek (1948):33–56.Google Scholar
Hayek, Friedrich A. 1948d. “The Facts of the Social Sciences.” In Hayek (1948):57–76.Google Scholar
Hayek, Friedrich A. 1948e. “The Meaning of Competition.” In Hayek (1948):92–106.Google Scholar
Hayek, Friedrich A. 1952. The Sensory Order. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Hayek, Friedrich A. 1960. The Constitution of Liberty. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Hayek, Friedrich A. 1967. Studies in Philosophy, Politics and Economics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hayek, Friedrich A. 1967a. “Rules, Perception and Intelligibility.” In Hayek (1967):43–65.Google Scholar
Hayek, Friedrich A. 1967b. “Notes on the Evolution of Systems of Rules of Conduct.” In Hayek(1967):66–81.Google Scholar
Hayek, Friedrich A. 1967c. “Kinds of Rationalism.” In Hayek (1967):82–95.Google Scholar
Hayek, Friedrich A. 1967d. “The Non Sequitur of the ‘Dependence Effect.’ ” In Hayek (1967):313–17.Google Scholar
Hayek, Friedrich A. 1973. Law, Legislation and Liberty, Volume 1. Rules and Order. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Hayek, Friedrich A. 1978. “Competition as a Discovery Procedure.” In New Studies in Politics, Economics and the History of Ideas, edited by Hayek, F. A., pp. 179–90. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Hayek, Friedrich A. 1979. The Counter-Revolution of Science, 2nd ed. Indianapolis: Liberty Press.Google Scholar
Hayek, Friedrich A. 1988. The Fatal Conceit, The Errors of Socialism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jameson, Fredric. 1984. “Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism.” New Left Review 146 (July-August):53–92.Google Scholar
Kant, Immanuel. 1977. Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics. Indianapolis: Hackett.Google Scholar
Katzner, Donald. 1989–90. “The Shackle-Vicker Approach to Decision-Making in Ignorance.” journal of Post Keynesian Economics 12:2 (Winter):237–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kennedy, Duncan. 1981. “Cost-Benefit Analysis of Entitlement Problems: A Critique.” Stanford Law Review 33:387–445.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Keynes, John Maynard. 1937. “The General Theory of Employment.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 51 (February):209–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Klamer, Arjo and Donald, McCloskey. 1989. “The Rhetoric of Disagreement.” Rethinking Marxism 2:3 (Fall):140–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kirzner, Israel. 1989. Discovery, Capitalism, and Distributive justice. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
Lachmann, Ludwig. 1986. The Market as an Economic Process. New York and Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
Lavoie, Don. 1986. “Euclideanism versus Hermeneutics: A Reinterpretation of Misean Apriorism.” In Subjectivism, Intelligibility and Economic Understanding, edited by Israel, Kirzner, pp. 192–210. New York: New York University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lavoie, Don (editor). 1990. Economics and Hermeneutics. London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Levy, David M. 1985. “The Impossibility of a Complete Methodological Individualist.” Economics and Philosophy 1:101–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Littlechild, S. C. 1979. “Comment: Radical Subjectivism or Radical Subversion?" In Time, Uncertainty, and Disequilibrium, edited by Mario, J. Rizzo, pp. 32–49. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books.Google Scholar
Madison, G. B. 1989. “Hayek and the Interpretive Turn.” Critical Review 3(2):169–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Madison, G. B. 1990. “How Individualistic is Methodological Individualism?” Critical Review 4(1-2):41–60S.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McCloskey, Donald. 1985. The Rhetoric of Economics. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
O'Driscoll, Gerald P. Jr , and Mario, Rizzo. 1985. The Economics of Time and Ignorance. New York and Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
Resnick, Stephen, and Richard Wolff, . 1987. Knowledge and Class. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Resnick, Stephen. 1988. “Marxian Theory and the Rhetoric of Economics.” In The Consequences of Economic Rhetoric, edited by Arjo, Klamer, Donald, McCloskey and Robert, Solow, pp. 47–63. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Rorty, Richard. 1979. Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Ruccio, David. 1991. “Economics and Postmodernism.” journal of Post Keynesian Economics 13:4 (Summer):495–510.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shackle, George L. S. 1972. Epistemics and Economics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Sugden, Robert. 1989. “Spontaneous Order.” Journal of Economic Perspectives 3(4):85–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tarascio, Vincent. 1972. “Vilfredo Pareto and Marginalism.” History of Political Economy 4:2 (Fall):406–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thomson, Alan. 1991. “Taking the Right Seriously: The Case of F. A. Hayek.” In Dangerous Supplements: Resistance and Renewal in Jurisprudence, edited by Peter Fitzpatrick, , pp. 68–101. Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Vickers, Douglas. 1978. Financial Markets in the Capitalist Process. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
White, Lawrence H. 1984. Methodology of the Austrian School. Auburn, AL: Ludwig von Mises Institute.Google Scholar
Wolff, Richard and Stephen Resnick, . 1987. Economics: Marxian Versus Neoclassical. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar