Methodenstreit: основні напрями критики К. Менгером методології німецької історичної школи

Abstract

У статті розглянуто ключові напрями критичних зауважень австрійського економіста К. Менгера щодо методології наукових досліджень представників німецької історичної школи. Показано, що теоретична, практична та історична науки є складовими загального вчення про народне господарство. Кожна з наук має свої принципи і методи, змішування яких є недопустимим при дослідженні господарської системи.

The article is devoted to the analysis of the scientific approach of the Austrian economist K. Menger in the methodological dispute known in the field of economics called Methodenstreit. In the first chapter of book “Investigations into the Method of the Social Sciences with Special Reference to Economics” (1883), K. Menger gives a series of critical remarks about the understanding of the representatives of the German historical school, G. von Schmoller in particular. There were a role of theoretical scientific knowledge, the goals and objectives of political economy, its interrelation with practical and historical sciences. K. Menger emphasized the superficiality and one-sided approach in the methodology of German economists. Particularly he acutely criticizes using historical method in the investigation of economic phenomena and processes. The object of analysis is a nation as a whole but they ignored the individual interaction of economic actors. Such approach had been causing the fact that theoretical economic science has been losing the ability to substantiate the laws in the functioning of the economic system and to investigate the deep essence of economic phenomena. Therefore, K. Menger made a point of both proving the falsehood of the historicism as a key scientific method of German economists and showing the importance of theory as an instrument of scientific knowledge of economic reality. By an example of the abstracting and the principle of atomism was shown why it is more important for the analysis of the functioning of the national economy detecting the laws of human economic activity and personal interest than the influence on it of historical conditions. It was concluded that the discussion on methods of economic analysis showed the crisis in the development of economic science in the second half of the XIX century. This dispute is important today because the modern economic theory is in a crisis too and requires a fundamental revision of its main methodological provisions.