An Essay on Method
Titles in the Liberty Fund Library of the Works of Ludwig von Mises
Edited by Bettina Bien Greaves
The Anti-capitalistic Mentality
Bureaucracy
Economic Freedom and Interventionism: An Anthology of Articles and Essays
Economic Policy: Thoughts for Today and Tomorrow
Human Action: A Treatise on Economics
Interventionism: An Economic Analysis
Liberalism: The Classical Tradition
Nation, State, and Economy: Contributions to the Politics and History of Our Time
Omnipotent Government: The Rise of the Total State and Total War
On the Manipulation of Money and Credit: Three Treatises on Trade-Cycle Theory
Planning for Freedom: Let the Market System Work
A Collection of Essays and Addresses
Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis
Theory and History: An Interpretation of Social and Economic Evolution
The Theory of Money and Credit
The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science: An Essay on Method
Edited by Richard M. Ebeling
Selected Writings of Ludwig von Mises
Volume 1: Monetary and Economic Policy Problems Before, During, and After the Great War
Volume 2: Between the Two World Wars: Monetary Disorder, Interventionism, Socialism, and the Great Depression
Volume 3: The Political Economy of International Reform and Reconstruction
This book is published by Liberty Fund, Inc., a foundation established to encourage study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals.
The cuneiform inscription that serves as our logo and as a design element in Liberty Fund books is the earliest-known written appearance of the word “freedom” (amagi), or “liberty.” It is taken from a clay document written about 2300 B.C. in the Sumerian city-state of Lagash.
Editorial additions © 2006 by Liberty Fund, Inc. First published in 1962 by William Volker Fund in association with D. Van Nostrand.
Front cover photograph of Ludwig von Mises used by permission of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, Auburn, Alabama.
This eBook edition published in 2012.
eBook ISBN: E-PUB 978-1-61487-153-8
CONTENTS
Some Preliminary Observations Concerning Praxeology Instead of an Introduction
1 The Permanent Substratum of Epistemology
4 The Starting Point of Praxeological Thinking
5 The Reality of the External World
8 The Sciences of Human Action
1 The Logical Structure of the Human Mind
2 A Hypothesis about the Origin of the A Priori Categories
4 The A Priori Representation of Reality
6 The Paradox of Probability Empiricism
8 The Absurdity of Any Materialistic Philosophy
CHAPTER 2 The Activistic Basis of Knowledge
1 Man and Action
2 Finality
3 Valuation
4 The Chimera of Unified Science
5 The Two Branches of the Sciences of Human Action
6 The Logical Character of Praxeology
7 The Logical Character of History
8 The Thymological Method
CHAPTER 3 Necessity and Volition
1 The Infinite
2 The Ultimate Given
3 Statistics
4 Free Will
5 Inevitability
CHAPTER 4 Certainty and Uncertainty
1 The Problem of Quantitative Definiteness
2 Certain Knowledge
3 The Uncertainty of the Future
4 Quantification and Understanding in Acting and in History
5 The Precariousness of Forecasting in Human Affairs
6 Economic Prediction and the Trend Doctrine
7 Decision-Making
8 Confirmation and Refutability
9 The Examination of Praxeological Theorems