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The “Historical” Character of Economic Theories

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 February 2011

Arthur Spiethoff
Arthur Spiethoff
Affiliation:
Badenweiler
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Extract

Translator's introduction: To understand the significance of this paper, the American reader should recall that, as Talcott Parsons says, German “idealistic empiricism” led to a repudiation of analytical social and economic theory “in favor of the concrete uniqueness and individuality of all things human.” The “general analytical level of scientific comprehension [was] a priori excluded” from the field of human action. Understanding of things human “in terms of the concrete individuality of the specific historical case became the goal.” Professor Arthur Spiethoff, once a student, later an assistant, of Gustav von Schmoller, and a friend of Edwin F. Gay while the latter studied in Berlin, moved away from that point of view. He recognized analytical theory as a legitimate subject and thereby deviated from what can be considered the typical nineteenth-century German attitude.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 12 , Issue 2 , Spring 1952 , pp. 131 - 139
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1952

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References

1 Parts I and II are printed here; related material is to appear in the forthcoming volume of readings in economic history edited by F. C. Lane and J. C. Riemersma, referred to in n. 10.

2 Schumpeter distinguished several connotations of the term “historical theory,” one of which is identical with the above; see Schmollers Jahrbuch, L (1926), 367Google Scholar.

3 Knies demanded for every species of economic life, characterized by specific institutions, a corresponding theory.

4 The philosopher Dilthey elaborated similar ideas for religion, poetry, and philosophy.

5 For these criticisms, see von Mises, Ludwig, Grundprobleme der Nationalökonomie (Jena, 1933), PP. viii, x, 3Google Scholar; See also below, n. 12.

6 The contribution of those economists who paved the way for “historical” theory has often been recognized. Artur Sommer has shown that the economists who devised the earliest theories of economic stages had economic policy in the back of their minds.—“Über Inhalt, Rahmen und Sinn älterer Stufentheorien,” Synopsis, [Festgabe für] Alfred Weber (Heidelberg, 1948), 537 ffGoogle Scholar. Friedrich List based a grandiose political world picture on “historical” theory. Finally, Heinrich Dietzel, critical of the historical school of economics from the methodological point of view, at least stressed its merit of having broken through the spell in which contemporaries were held by the idea of natural law as ruling economic life, a belief which earlier German writers, such as Rau, F. v. Hermann, and Nebenius had shared, though with certain reservations. Dietzel pointed to two further achievements of the historical school, namely, that it had discarded the belief in competition as a panacea and that it had undertaken to observe and explain “historical” realities in economic life. For the former, credit was given to the older group, Roscher, Hildebrand, and Knies, while Schmoller was recognized as responsible for the latter. Dietzel, Heinrich, Theoretische Sozialökpnomik (Leipzig, 1895), pp. 112, 113Google Scholar.

On the other hand Ludwig Stcphinger, a student of the Heidelberg philosopher and epistemologist, Heinrich Rickert, when he went so far as to identify economics essentially with history of which the present is part and parcel, overshot the target.—Zur Methode der Volkswirtschaftslehre (Karlsruhe, 1907)Google Scholar, passim. For Stephinger, economic theory and other statements of a generalizing character serve only to explain the historical process. This is an error, of course; economic theory and economic history stand on the same plane, side by side, and represent specific research subjects of equal value.

7 von Zwiedincck-Sūdenhorst, Otto, “Theoretische Begriffsbildung und Wirtschaftsgeschichte,” Schmollers Jahrbuch, LVI (1933), 873 ffGoogle Scholar.

8 As an example of this kind of theory see von Gottl-Ottlilienfeld, Friedrich, Ewige Wirtschaft, Grundlehre von Wirtschaftsleben (Berlin, 1943), 2 volsGoogle Scholar.

9 Translator's note: Copeland, Morris A., “Institutional Economics and Model Analysis,” American Economic Review, XLI, No. 2 (1951) 62Google Scholar. The German term for these models is “Konstruktionsmodelle.”

10 Translator's note: Concerning the term “anschauliche Theorie” see Arthur Spiethoff's paper “Anschauliche und reine volkswirtschaftliche Theorie und ihr Verhaltnis zu einander,” Synopsis, 569 ff. (A translation of the important parts of this paper will appear in the forthcoming book of readings in economic history being prepared by F. C. Lane and J. C. Riemersma, to be published by the Blakiston Company for the American Economics Association and the Economic History Association.) In that paper Spiethoff describes “anschauliche Theorie” as a theory which deals with economic reality. In contrast to pure theory it does not isolate phenomena for the purpose of studying specific relationships. It first establishes a “system of meaning,” a “meaningful complex” (these being Talcott Parson's translations of the German “Sinnzusammenhang”). Then by a process of inductive logic the theorist sets out to delimit unique phenomena, and he selects those of their characteristics which in relation to that meaningful complex are essential while they are at the same time also regularly occurring. The goal of a theorist of that school is a generalizing presentation of the uniformities of a discrete species of phenomena (“Arteigenheit”).

The student familiar with modern philosophy and psychology will recognize immediately the kinship of “anschauliche Theorie” and Husserl's phenomenology and Gestalt psychology. It is the whole or part-whole, the Gestalt, at which the theorist of that school aims. Consequently, the term “anschauliche Theorie” will from now on be translated by economic Gestalt theory.

Very useful for the understanding of Spiethoff's place on the mundus intellectualis and of this paper is Talcott Parsons, The Structure of Social Action (New York, 1937), Part III, 473 ff. The quotation in the translator's introduction to this paper is from page 477 of Parsons' book.

11 See Schumpeter, Joseph, “Uber die geschichtliche Bedingtheit der Sätze der reincn Wirtschaftstheorie,” Schmollers Jahrbuch, L (1926), 372Google Scholar.

12 Translator's note: Spiethoff's thinking is to such an extent in line with Max Weber's that Talcott Parsons' interpretation of the latter's epistemological position will help to understand the former's logic. Max Weber, as Talcott Parsons interprets him, did not believe that in the process of analysis of the historical individual and comparison of it with others, i.e., in the process by which general concepts are built up, a uniform system of general concepts can issue. He rather showed that there could be as many such systems as there were points of view significant to knowledge. On the other hand such systems of general concepts transcended the historical individual—see Parsons, pp. 593, 594. Spiethoff applies this basic epistemological insight to the field of economics.

He himself in a paragraph of the original paper, which is not translated, points to the fact that his epistemology is in line with Wilhelm Wundt's system of logic; see the latter's Logik., 4th ed. (Stuttgart, 1921), III, 542, 543Google Scholar.

13 Von Mises in his Grundprobleme der Nationalökonomie has without reservation denied the existence of “historical” theory. Karl Bode (“Die Grundprobleme der Nationalökonomie,” Schmollers Jahrbuch, LXVII [1933], 87 ff.) calls Mises's attempt to prove the nonexistence of “historical” theory a failure. The difference of opinion roots in the fact that Mises considers economic theory a nomothetic a priori science. [Translator's comment: It lies also in the fact that Mises thinks exclusively of logical validity, while Professor Spiethoff thinks in terms of applicability and validity in the sense of giving a truth-approaching picture of reality.]

14 This concept can be understood only on the basis of the epistemology of economic Gestalt theory that I have elaborated elsewhere (see n. 10 of this paper). Here I will be particularly concerned with its relation to all kinds of “historical” theory. [Translator's note: The reader will readily see that Professor Spiethoff uses the phrase economic style for two different things; namely, for certain patterns of economic life (institutional setups) and for the conceptual models that are designed to deal with those patterns.]

15 It goes without saying that every business cycle shows unique features that can be explained only historically and to that extent business cycles are the subject of economic history. But in addition, business cycles are also generic phenomena which show distinct similarities, uniform in character, wherever and whenever the phenomenon appears. Consequently, business cycles can also be the subject of “historical” theory of economic Gestalt. It must be clearly understood that business cycles are time-conditioned and belong to the capitalistic style within which they represent a specific and typical phenomenon. Should capitalism change in its essentials or entirely disappear, business cycles would change their characteristics or disappear also. Business-cycle theory is applicable only for the domain of that style, but for its domain it is generally valid; that is, it is “historical” theory.