Richard Kerschagl · 1948
Kerschagl’s Einführung reconstructs the conditions under which pure economics can be scientific. Its first move is to deny that method is an external instrument applied to a fixed object. A discipline that defines the economy as a “System von Mitteln für Ziele,” as causal regularity, or as functional relation has already selected a different object. The governing thesis is therefore methodological and ontological at once:
Am Anfange jeder Methodengeschichte und Methodenlehre hätte der Satz zu stehen, daß Methode und Stoff sich gegenseitig bedingen und jeweils bestimmen.
English translation: At the beginning of every history of method and every doctrine of method should stand the proposition that method and subject-matter mutually condition and determine one another.
The first half turns this thesis into a compressed history of economic method. Kerschagl reads the Physiocrats as early theorists of order, exactness, circulation, and teleology; the classics as deductive system-builders whose clarity degenerates into overconfident abstraction; Roscher, Knies, Schmoller, and the historical school as a necessary protest against “Robinsonaden” and empty law-making; Menger and the Austrian school as a restoration of exact theory through abstraction, causality, and isolation; Wieser through introspection, Böhm-Bawerk through empirical abstraction, and Schumpeter through functional description. Later chapters bring Stammler, Rickert, Spann, Amonn, Sombart, and Englisch into the argument in order to show that economics cannot settle its method without philosophy, logic, law, psychology, and mathematics. The historical school’s cry is understood but not accepted as sufficient:
Zurück zur Wirklichkeit!
English translation: Back to reality!
The second half translates this history into problems. Kerschagl’s treatment of Wirklichkeit is central. Against both uncritical empiricism and speculative construction, he argues that science never reproduces the whole manifold of the real. It forms concepts, selects the essential, and therefore abstracts. Abstraction is not falsification if it is conscious of its limits; idealization is useful only as model, not as reality.
Wirklichkeit ist ihrem Wesen nach das Wesentliche und nicht das Vollständige.
English translation: Reality is, in its essence, the essential, not the complete.
This yields his account of exactness. Economics may strive for exactness, but exactness means logical construction, empirical grounding, and objective checkability—not necessarily mathematical calculation. Mathematics may clarify or translate relations; it cannot by itself discover economic truth. Quantification is possible most securely in the price sphere, while value-comparisons remain bound to subjective and relative magnitudes.
Die reine Ökonomie strebt nach dem Ziele, eine exakte Wissenschaft zu sein.
English translation: Pure economics strives toward the goal of being an exact science.
Kerschagl’s critique of necessity is equally important. The old natural-scientific ideal of necessary causality is, for him, too metaphysical to serve as an unquestioned foundation. Economics should work with regularity, probability, functional dependence, and conditional validity. He distinguishes normative laws, laws of valuation or performance, and genetic-functional laws of becoming. Thus economic law is neither mere command nor mere natural mechanism.
Wir vermögen auf die Idee der Notwendigkeit des Geschehens, sofern sie ein genetischer Begriff ist, zu verzichten; auf die Notwendigkeit des Mittels zur Zielerreichung brauchen wir nicht zu verzichten.
English translation: We can dispense with the idea of the necessity of events insofar as it is a genetic concept; but we need not dispense with the necessity of the means for attaining an end.
The same balancing act governs his discussion of individualism and universalism. A purely atomistic economics misrepresents the interdependence of economic life; yet every usable theory must isolate. The “individualistische Unterstellung” is permissible only when recognized as an assumption within a larger universal Zusammenhang. Hence Kerschagl rejects methodological monism:
Es gibt keine wissenschaftliche Universalmethode
English translation: There is no universal scientific method.
The final chapters dissolve the inherited oppositions: empirical versus logical, inductive versus deductive, causal versus teleological. No science can be merely empirical, because all knowledge requires concepts; none can be merely logical, because economics concerns experienced reality. Likewise, causal analysis supplies genetic explanation, while teleology supplies the ordering of means to ends. Pure economics needs both if it is to explain development and judge performance.
Die Frage nach dem Warum gibt uns die Mittel, die Frage nach dem Wozu gibt uns Klarheit über ihre Verwendung, über ihren Gebrauch.
English translation: The question of the Why gives us the means; the question of the What-for gives us clarity about their application, about their use.
The work’s relevance lies in this synthesis after the Methodenstreit: Kerschagl preserves Austrian exact theory, accepts the historical warning against empty abstraction, and incorporates universalist and teleological insights without surrendering genetic explanation. Its core conceptual move is to make economics a conditional, self-limiting, empirically disciplined, logically exact science of economic reality as essential, interdependent, and purposeful.
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