3,673 works, 150 years of economic thought. Each one summarized and searchable, with cited passages inside.
When formalism, intuitionism, and logicism each stake a claim to the foundations of mathematics, the deeper trouble, Kaufmann contends, is one of sense: symbolic forms, abstractions, and abbreviations get mistaken for independent objects. This 1931 essay reworks the received theory of abstraction, recasting it not as the stripping-away of features but as the holding-fixed of an invariant structure while others vary, and turns it against conceptual realism and extensional logic alike. Expressions like properties of properties and functions of functions are legitimate only as translatable abbreviations. Natural number, on this account, is neither a class of equinumerous classes nor a property of collections but an abstraction from the ordered act of counting; Peano's axioms define that structure, and complete induction merely excludes further determinations. Undecidability, where it appears, signals not metaphysical depth but presuppositions that have failed to fix their object.
The central problem in the theory of a science lies in clearly grasping the sense of the relevant propositions.
Calculus can locate a monopolist’s maximum profit—but who establishes the demand and cost functions on which the calculation depends? In this 1931 article, Felix Kaufmann uses that distinction to reconsider what mathematics contributes to economics. His perspective joins the logical analysis of mathematical proof to an insistence on understanding economic motives: neither formal deduction nor price curves alone supply an empirical theory of action. Against both blanket objections to mathematization and overconfident analogies with physics, he asks when simplifying assumptions make inquiry productive and when they merely make calculation possible. Readers gain a precise way to distinguish computational success from economic discovery, and to examine what assumptions about continuity, measurement, and choice permit a model to explain.
Rejecting the idea that statutory language mechanically determines every judicial decision need not mean abandoning precise legal definitions. This tension frames Felix Kaufmann’s brief review of Albert A. Ehrenzweig jun.’s Irrtum und Rechtswidrigkeit. Kaufmann warns that legislators can use the limits of legal formulation as a reason to leave unlawfulness and culpability insufficiently defined. Against that background, he assesses Ehrenzweig’s challenge to familiar distinctions between justification and excuse, and between mistakes about unlawfulness and mistakes about an offense’s statutory elements. His endorsement remains qualified: conceptual boldness does not guarantee complete logical rigor. The review offers a compact encounter with Kaufmann’s standards of legal analysis and with the stakes of translating a theory of mistake into provisions for the Austrian draft criminal code of 1927.
Can a condemnation of Soviet law rest on legal technique alone? In this brief 1933 review, Felix Kaufmann questions the basis of B. Mirkine-Guetzévitch’s severe verdict without dismissing the research behind it. Constitutional texts and legislative acts matter, but so do Soviet jurists’ commentaries, given the extensive discretion available to those applying the law. Kaufmann finds that the study’s conclusions owe much to its author’s passionate democratic convictions, not merely to technical analysis. His distinction between the grounds of a judgment and the value of its evidence gives this short review its interest: political commitment need not invalidate documentary scholarship, even when it complicates the claim to a specifically legal critique. He also credits Rita Willfort’s German translation for its subject expertise and linguistic skill.
The Methodenstreit had hardened into a war of slogans, naturalism against Verstehen, nomothetic against idiographic, value-free against normative, and this 1936 German treatise sets out to disarm every one of them. Kaufmann offers not a doctrine but a critique of principles: methods earn their place by problem-type and research aim, never by metaphysical prestige. Physical objectivity itself rests on schemas and measurement; social science differs because its objects include alter egos, projects, and socially available meanings, so understanding is indispensable yet never sovereign. Drawing on Weber and Schütz for controlled interpretation, he recasts marginal utility theory as an analysis of purpose-rational choice within a ranked goal-order, treats ideal types as instruments of causal control, and credits Kelsen with purifying legal dogmatics while rejecting the Sein/Sollen dualism. Plurality is preserved; its inflation into pseudo-conflict is what must go.
Demgemäß ist alle Kritik in diesem Buche Prinzipienkritik.
English translation: “Accordingly, all criticism in this book is criticism of principles.”
Understanding an action is not the same as establishing that one’s interpretation is correct. In this article, Felix Kaufmann makes that distinction central to a social science that neither imitates physics wholesale nor claims exemption from empirical testing. His example of a naval distress signal shows how deciphering words, recognizing a request, explaining an emergency, and inferring the sender’s knowledge require different evidence. Drawing on Weber and Schütz, he replaces sweeping disputes over scientific method with precise questions about what investigators assume and how their claims can be checked. Readers can discover why uncertainty need not mean vagueness, and why practical interests may shape the choice of a research problem without deciding what counts as an adequate answer.
Making mathematics accessible need not mean relaxing its definitions. In this short newspaper review, Felix Kaufmann praises Friedrich Waismann’s Einführung in das mathematische Denken precisely for preserving rigor while opening foundational questions to philosophically interested nonspecialists. His distinction between genuine knowledge and the dangerous half-knowledge of popular exposition gives the review its critical edge; his hope that Waismann’s account of differential calculus will correct misconceptions about the “infinitely small” makes that standard concrete. Kaufmann also separates pedagogical success from philosophical agreement: he recommends the discussion of disputed foundations while withholding assent from some of its theses, without specifying his objections. The review offers a compact view of what Kaufmann demands from an introduction—clarity that neither dilutes concepts nor conceals unresolved questions.
Appeals to self-evident principles can turn disputes over social-scientific method into contests of rival certainties. In this review of Rudolf Carnap’s Logische Syntax der Sprache, Felix Kaufmann examines an alternative: replacing claims to privileged philosophical insight with explicit rules for constructing and analysing scientific language. Writing with sociology, economics, and historical inquiry in view, he concentrates on the book’s philosophical consequences rather than its technical logical investigations. His account clarifies how Carnap distinguishes empirical questions from questions about concepts and theories, and why tolerance toward different logical systems requires clearly stated rules. Kaufmann’s endorsement remains qualified: he does not fully accept Carnap’s position, but regards it as a productive basis for debate. The review offers a concise encounter with that tension between methodological clarification and philosophy’s reduction to syntax.
Logical symbolism can repel nonmathematicians through reverential awe as readily as through aversion. In this brief 1938 newspaper review, Felix Kaufmann praises the German translation of Alfred Tarski’s introduction for addressing that obstacle without demanding advanced mathematics. His judgement rests on concrete teaching choices: minimal symbolism, secondary-school prerequisites, and exercises that let readers test their understanding. The review offers a compact account of what Kaufmann values in an introduction to logic—not merely ease of exposition, but preparation for harder study and clearer reflection on research methods. His particular recommendation to researchers and students concerned with the methodology of their own disciplines connects an elementary textbook with questions beyond mathematics.
Reliable predictions about railways and postal services do not require knowledge of every participant’s motives. For Felix Kaufmann, such ordinary cases unsettle the opposition between exact natural science and an irreducibly subjective study of society. In this 1938 article, he argues that both domains depend on interconnected, revisable judgments, while explaining why understanding purposeful conduct requires introspection as well as knowledge of external causes. Methodology offers no philosophical guarantee of truth: its task is to expose assumptions and clarify the rules by which claims are accepted, tested, and withdrawn. His comparison of scientific statements to club members—with admission requirements, ranks, and weighted votes—gives readers a concrete way to distinguish disciplinary boundaries from evidential warrant, and reliable knowledge from claims insulated against correction.
Political disagreement need not make methodological criticism futile. In this second installment, Felix Kaufmann asks how social scientists can test one another’s claims without either invoking truths immune to evidence or treating every disagreement as an irreconcilable outlook. His answer begins with rules researchers already accept in practice: standards for truth, but also preferences for simplicity, precision, and explanatory usefulness. This distinction gives concrete purchase on disputed definitions, judgments of justice, and causal explanations that mistake necessary conditions for sufficient ones. Kaufmann’s treatment of value judgments is especially pointed: he argues that scientific legitimacy depends on shared criteria of assessment, not on excluding evaluation altogether. The article offers a way to identify where a dispute concerns evidence, where it concerns research aims, and where clarification can make cooperation possible.
The crucial point, however, is this: to think scientifically is to submit implicitly to definite rules.
Scientific cooperation need not depend on agreement about what science ultimately is. In this review of the early installments of the International Encyclopedia of Unified Science, Felix Kaufmann supports the project while rejecting its physicalist doctrine: the claim that biological, psychological, and sociological concepts can be reduced to physical concepts. His concern is concrete—efforts to eliminate metaphysical pseudo-problems may also discard genuine questions. Judgments about probability, formalization, and linguistics test another requirement of unity: whether specialists can make their problems intelligible beyond their own disciplines. The review offers a critical participant’s perspective on an ambitious cooperative enterprise, distinguishing the value of shared inquiry from the adequacy of its philosophical framework.
Each reader should be enabled to obtain a coherent view of the problems dealt with, even if he cannot understand every detail.