Felix Kaufmann · 1925
Felix Kaufmann’s German-language study examines the logical foundations of economics by distinguishing the constitution of economic objects from the empirical explanation of conduct. Its methodological analysis supports an investigation of goods, exchange, measurement, value, and Austrian marginal utility theory. Conceptual clarification establishes what questions mean without supplying the evidence needed to answer them.
Der Vollzug dieser Unterscheidung setzt die Grundeinsicht in die Selbständigkeit der theoretischen gegenüber der empirischen Erkenntnis als Basis jedweder Methodenkritik voraus.
English translation: The carrying out of this distinction presupposes the fundamental insight into the independence of theoretical as against empirical knowledge, as the basis of any critique of method.
The independence of theoretical from empirical knowledge does not license deducing economic regularities from definitions. It requires separating constitutive properties from contextual indicators, definitions from accounts of origins, and a law’s form from its conditions of application. Logic can expose confused claims to necessity but cannot determine which empirical explanation succeeds.
Kaufmann’s discussion of causality illustrates this restraint. Empirical laws are not exclusively causal laws; nor can causal explanation secure exactness simply by excluding everything that prevents an expected result.
Denn »Störung« ist eben alles dasjenige, wodurch das Nichteintreten einer erwarteten Wirkung erklärt wird.
English translation: For "disturbance" is precisely everything by which the failure of an expected effect to occur is explained.
Attributing every failure to an unspecified disturbance risks turning a law into a research postulate rather than an independently testable explanation. Likewise, explaining conduct through “needs” inferred solely from that conduct restates the observation instead of accounting for it.
Understanding motives remains causal inquiry, but requires distinctions specific to intentional consciousness. Kaufmann separates the temporal act of consciousness, its content, and the real state toward which action is directed.
Der Zweck als Bewußtseinsinhalt ist aber nicht nur von dem realen Zweck, sondern auch von dem Bewußtseinsakte zu unterscheiden, dessen Inhalt er bildet.
English translation: The end, as a content of consciousness, is however to be distinguished not only from the real end, but also from the act of consciousness whose content it forms.
Understanding, purposive calculation, and evaluation must therefore remain distinct. Statements about what people value are empirical claims; judgments that something is valuable require evaluative premises. Facts and regularities alone cannot establish norms.
The economic analysis identifies its domain through acquiring goods by relinquishing other goods, extending beyond interpersonal barter to isolated action. Goods are understood through opportunities of disposal, not merely as physical objects. Needs, pleasure, awareness, and valuation may explain conduct without defining its economic character. Inferring a preference from an exchange and then explaining that exchange by the preference is consequently circular. Similarly, defining money precedes explaining how legal arrangements, material properties, or practices enable particular objects to function as money.
Measurement introduces numerical exchange relations without making money logically indispensable. Numbers acquire economic significance through empirical assignments: equivalence between small quantities does not establish proportional equivalence between larger ones. Mathematical deduction cannot supply the factual assumptions encoded in equations. Kaufmann thus distinguishes economic laws from psychological or technical auxiliary propositions used in economic explanation.
Economic value denotes a good’s position in exchange relations rather than its evaluative worth. Objective and subjective value theories differ principally in explanatory procedure: one emphasizes external conditions, the other motives. Logic cannot decide their comparative empirical success.
The critique of Austrian theory centers on the passage from understanding individual purposes to establishing social regularities. “Rationality” may mean intelligibility, deliberation, purposiveness, planning, or economical acquisition; these meanings cannot be conflated. A consistent ranking of uses is a substantive assumption, not a logical consequence of exchange. Marginal utility accordingly provides a double heuristic directive: investigate intended uses and assume an ordering among them. Explanation depends on independently established rankings. Defining the least important use as the one abandoned merely reproduces the choice. Nevertheless, Kaufmann credits marginal utility theory with redirecting attention from physical things toward their uses.
The same distinction governs imputation: substantive economic knowledge enters when equations relating inputs and products are formulated, not simply when they are solved. The legitimacy of profit additionally requires value premises. The concluding economic Formenlehre is restricted to formal transformations of economic categories; even interest introduces time beyond this narrow framework. Kaufmann’s contribution is a disciplined separation of conceptual constitution, empirical explanation, mathematical inference, and evaluation, intended to strengthen economic research without replacing it with logic.
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