Alfred Amonn · 1944
Amonn’s book is a methodological introduction to economic thinking rather than a compendium of doctrines. Its elementary character is philosophical: before economics can treat prices, production, money, or policy, it must clarify the concepts by which “Volkswirtschaft” becomes an object of knowledge. Ordinary language is insufficient, because it tempts the reader to treat inherited words as if they named ready-made economic things.
Begriffe sind Denkwerkzeuge.
English translation: Concepts are tools of thought.
This formula expresses Amonn’s anti-realist view of concepts. Concepts are not passive copies of reality but instruments for ordering it under a chosen standpoint. Economic science therefore begins with disciplined abstraction. To learn economics is not merely to acquire terminology, but to learn how to form and use concepts in a controlled way.
Volkswirtschaftliches Denken will gelernt sein und kann nur in langer, mühevoller Arbeit erlernt werden.
English translation: Economic thinking must be learned, and it can be acquired only through long and arduous work.
The book’s central discipline is the separation of standpoints. Amonn distinguishes causal explanation, teleological consideration, and normative judgment, warning against the common confusion of these modes. Economics may explain interdependencies, deliberate about means to ends, or evaluate duties and rights, but these are not the same intellectual act.
Die Grundkategorien der kausalen Vorstellungs- und Betrachtungsweise sind Ursache und Wirkung, die der teleologischen sind Zweck und Mittel und die Grundkategorien der normativen Betrachtungsweise sind Pflicht und Recht.
English translation: The fundamental categories of the causal mode of conception and consideration are cause and effect; those of the teleological mode are end and means; and the fundamental categories of the normative mode are duty and right.
This distinction underlies Amonn’s account of theoretical and practical economics. Theoretical economics investigates relations and conditions; practical economics concerns purposes and means; normative economics belongs to another plane again. Much of the book’s force comes from refusing to let policy language, moral language, and explanatory language slide into one another unnoticed.
Amonn’s reconstruction of “Wirtschaft” is equally important. Economic phenomena are not identified by their material substance alone, as though certain objects were simply economic in themselves. They become economic through their position within an organized context of economizing activity.
Die wirtschaftlichen Erscheinungen werden somit durch ihre Zugehörigkeit zu einer Wirtschaft charakterisiert.
English translation: Economic phenomena are thus characterized by their belonging to an economy.
From this point Amonn clarifies “Volkswirtschaft.” It is not a collective household, not the economy of a people as if a people were one acting subject, and not a substance standing above individual economies. It is a specific connection among individual economic units: a relational integration of separate economies. This allows Amonn to avoid hypostatizing the nation while still making the national economy a legitimate object of theory.
The work’s structure follows this logic. It begins with concept formation, proceeds through the basic categories of economic thought, and then constructs the ideas of economy, economic phenomenon, and national economy. Its “Grundprobleme” are therefore prior to familiar applied problems: they concern how economic reality can be scientifically delimited and grasped at all.
Amonn’s enduring significance lies in this insistence that economics is not a direct inventory of empirical facts. It constructs its object under a definite cognitive aspect, and it must remain aware of that construction.
Das besondere, Eigenartige dieser Bestimmung des „Wirtschafts“-begriffs, das, wodurch er sich von denen der meisten anderen unterscheidet, liegt darin, daß sie erkenntnistheoretisch-konstruktiv und nicht empirisch-deskriptiv vorgeht.
English translation: The particular and distinctive feature of this determination of the concept of "economy," that which distinguishes it from most others, lies in the fact that it proceeds in an epistemological-constructive rather than an empirical-descriptive manner.
The book is thus best read as a grammar of economic reasoning. It teaches that before one argues about economic policy or explains market processes, one must ask what kind of claim is being made, which standpoint is being adopted, and what object the concept has constructed. Its main achievement is to replace substantial images of “the economy” with a relational account of economic integration grounded in methodological self-awareness.
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