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Abstract: This paper will attempt to reposition Ludwig von Mises’s methodological apriorism and the Austrian economic method firmly in the Aristotelian realist tradition of apriorism, rather than the more problematic apriorism associated with Kantian idealism. The author will argue that the Misean method whilst aesthetically Kantian, is far more nuanced than semantics suggest. That being, Mises’s methodological apriosm closely mirrors in method and application the imminent realism of Aristolean apriorism, circumscribing to a large degree the analytic/synthetic dichotomy that many positivists claim render Mises’s Kantian methodology both epistemologically sterile and hopelessly anachronistic. Thus, if we can prove Mises was Kantian in a purely semantic sense, we can render obsolete the positivist claim that the praxeological method is mere tautology, and instead establish it as a theory of praxis, given it is claims to the contrary that constitute the most consistent and potentially problematic criticism levelled at the aprioristic science of human action.
Abstract: This paper will attempt to reposition Ludwig von Mises’s methodological apriorism and the Austrian economic method firmly in the Aristotelian realist tradition of apriorism, rather than the more problematic apriorism associated with Kantian idealism. The author will argue that the Misean method whilst aesthetically Kantian, is far more nuanced than semantics suggest. That being, Mises’s methodological apriosm closely mirrors in method and application the imminent realism of Aristolean apriorism, circumscribing to a large degree the analytic/synthetic dichotomy that many positivists claim render Mises’s Kantian methodology both epistemologically sterile and hopelessly anachronistic. Thus, if we can prove Mises was Kantian in a purely semantic sense, we can render obsolete the positivist claim that the praxeological method is mere tautology, and instead establish it as a theory of praxis, given it is claims to the contrary that constitute the most consistent and potentially problematic criticism levelled at the aprioristic science of human action.