Abstract
Scripture tells us that the truth will set us free. But we moderns hold that only freedom permits the discovery of that liberating truth. This search assumes the existence of an inexhaustible empirical terrain which awaits exploration. But there is another enabling assumption, one equally important but often denied, at work here: intellectual pluralism or the belief that there is more than one method of doing sound social science. The goal of this essay is to show, in a concise and reasoned way, why Friedrich List and the German Historical School stand at the heart of the contemporary defence of such pluralism, of this social scientific freedom to choose.
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Notes
John A. Hall (Ed.): Rediscoveries: Some Neglected Modern European Political Thinkers, Oxford (Claredon Press) 1986.
Iain Hampsher-Monk: A History of Modern Political Thought, Oxford (Blackwell) 1992, p. ix.
James Fallows: Looking at the Sun: The Rise of the New East Asian Economic and Political System, New York (Pantheon Books) 1994. While economic historians such as Eric Roll continue to include summaries of List’s views on economic theory, it remains to be seen whether Roll’s presentation of List’s ideas under the rubric of “German Romanticism” is best understood as a way of fending off List’s detractors rather than as a failure on Roll’s part to appreciate List’s true importance. See Eric Roll: A History of Economic Thought, revised edition, London, Boston (Faber & Faber) 1992 (fifth edition), pp. 204-207.
See, in particular, Otsuka Hisao: Otsuka Hisao Chosakushu, Dai-roku-kan, Kokumin Keizai (The Collected Works of Otsuka Hisao, Volume 6: National Economics), Tokyo (Iwanami Shoten) 1969.
George Steiner: In Bluebeard’s Castle: Some Notes towards the Redefinition of Culture, New Haven, Connecticut (Yale University Press) 1971, p. 59.
John Maynard Keynes: The Economic Consequences of the Peace, The Collected Writings of John Maynard Keynes, Volume II, London (Macmillan/ Cambridge University Press) 1971, p. 10.
Francis Fukuyama: “The End of History?”, The National Interest, Summer 1989 issue, pp. 3-18.
Tsurada Toshimasa: Sengo Nihon no Sangyo Seisaku (Industrial policy in post-war Japan), Tokyo (Nihon Keizai Shinbun-sha) 1982, p. 9. The translation is from David Williams: Japan: Beyond the End of History, op. cit, p. 131.
See Peter Koslowski (Ed.): The Theory of Ethical Economy in the Historical School: Wilhelm Roscher, Lorenz von Stein, Gustav Schmoller, Wilhelm Dilthey and Contemporary Theory, Berlin (Springer-Verlag) 1995, pp. 15–38.
Jacob Viner: The Long View and the Short: Studies in Economic Theory and Policy, New York (Free Press) 1958, p. 286.
Maruyama Masao: Gendai Seiji no Shiso to Kodo, Tokyo (Mirai-sha) 1964. In English, see: Thought and Behaviour in Modern Japanese Politics, ed. by Ivan Morris, London (Oxford University Press) 1969.
See, for example, Maruyama Masao: Chusei to Hangyaku (Loyalty and betrayal), Tokyo (Chikuma-shobo) 1992.
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Williams, D. (1997). Germany, Japan and National Economics: An Alternative Paradigm of Modernity?. In: Koslowski, P. (eds) Methodology of the Social Sciences, Ethics, and Economics in the Newer Historical School. Studies in Economic Ethics and Philosophy. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-59095-5_21
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