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Mises, the A Priori, and the Foundations of Economics: A Qualified Defence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 December 2008

Stephen D. Parsons
Stephen D. Parsons
Affiliation:
De Montfort University
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Extract

In a recent paper, Pierluigi Barrotta (1996) argues that Mises ‘ended up by defending an epistemological tenet very far from Kant's’ (p. 51), concluding that ‘Mises's apriorism cannot be vindicated through Kant's epistemology’ (p. 65). In contrast, I shall argue that certain of Mises's arguments can be reconstructed in Kantian terms, and thus the distance between Mises and Kant is not as extreme as Barrotta's argument may appear to suggest. Specifically, I shall argue that Mises, like Kant, seeks to establish the a priori nature of the category of causality. To this extent at least, Mises's apriorism can be vindicated through Kant's epistemology.

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Type
Essays
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Economics & Philosophy , Volume 13 , Issue 2 , October 1997 , pp. 175 - 196
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1997

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