Thinking Like an Austrian

Abstract

I was introduced to libertarianism and Austrian economics as an undergraduate in Oxford, and I began to explore the links between philosophers and economists in the former Austria-Hungary. I was led also to the phenomenological movement founded by Edmund Husserl, more specifically to the Munich branch of the movement whose members sought to apply Husserl’s methods to the study of extra-philosophical topics such as law, language, the state, and religion. Between 1976 and (roughly) 2000, I focused my work on these Austro-German themes, co-founding an organization by the name of the Seminar for Austro-German Philosophy which attempted to familiarize other philosophers in the English-speaking world with the contributions of thinkers such as Menger, Hayek, Brentano, Reinach, and Ingarden.