Menger’s essay is a methodological intervention in the aftermath of the Methodenstreit. Its subject is not a substantive doctrine of value, exchange, or policy, but the ordering of economic knowledge. He asks how economics can remain one field while recognizing several irreducible directions of inquiry: historical-statistical description, morphology, theory, and applied science. The danger he opposes is an encyclopedic “political economy” that gathers everything economic into one externally ordered aggregate.
Die Lösung der hier berührten methodologischen Probleme ist ein dringendes Bedürfnis unserer Wissenschaft.
English translation: The solution of the methodological problems touched upon here is an urgent need of our science.
The governing distinction is between sciences divided by object and sciences divided by cognitive aim. The economy is one object-domain, but it can be studied as present condition, historical development, recurrent form, causal law, or practical problem. Economic history and statistics therefore have full legitimacy, yet their legitimacy does not license the historical school to identify them with economics as a whole. They treat concrete phenomena in space and time; theory seeks general connections; practical economics examines means to given ends under typical circumstances.
Die Gliederung der Wirtschaftswissenschaften in historisch-statistische, morphologische, theoretische und angewandte ist in der Darstellung lange noch nicht zur allgemeinen Übung gelangt.
English translation: The division of the economic sciences into historical-statistical, morphological, theoretical, and applied has, in expositions, by no means yet come into general practice.
For Menger, this is also a principle of exposition. Historical surveys or literary introductions may usefully precede a treatise, but they do not dissolve the boundary between history, theory, and policy. As in the natural sciences, several disciplines may share a real domain without being merged into a single system. The independence of economic history and economic policy is therefore a condition of scientific order, not a sign of fragmentation.
Die selbständige Darstellung der Wirtschaftsgeschichte und der Wirtschaftspolitik ist eine unbedingte Notwendigkeit.
English translation: The independent exposition of economic history and of economic policy is an absolute necessity.
His treatment of morphology is deliberately limited. The elementary concepts generated by theoretical analysis belong inside theory, not in a separate descriptive science. But complex economic formations, shaped by place, time, law, custom, and other non-economic conditions, may require systematic typology. Morphology supplements the classification when it describes such forms without replacing either historical explanation of development or theoretical explanation of laws.
The essay’s strongest defense concerns practical economics. Against the objection that science can speak only of what is, Menger argues that practical sciences formulate conditional knowledge: if an end is assumed, they investigate suitable means. Their claims are not absolute commands and not mere records of past measures. They depend on theory and experience, but they organize a distinct kind of knowledge required for action.
Die praktischen Wissenschaften bieten uns nicht die „Rezepte“, nach welchen in jedem einzelnen konkreten Falle gehandelt werden kann.
English translation: The practical sciences do not furnish us with the "recipes" according to which one can act in every single concrete case.
This explains why application cannot be mechanical. The statesman, administrator, or reformer must adapt general practical propositions to concrete circumstances through judgment. Yet the need for judgment does not abolish the science, any more than medical or technological judgment abolishes therapy or engineering. Applied economics is neither a recipe book nor a disguised branch of abstract theory.
In the closing polemic against Brentano and Kleinwächter, Menger defends methodological reflection as itself necessary for progress. He rejects the demand that theory prove its worth by immediately abolishing social misery: theory clarifies the inner connection of economic phenomena, while policy uses such knowledge under practical conditions. The essay therefore turns the Methodenstreit into a constructive taxonomy. Economics is plural, but not chaotic; its branches support one another precisely because their aims, methods, and modes of exposition are kept distinct.
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