Apriorism

Mises’s work of ‘Human action’ is analyzed in relation to the methodological conceptions of his predecessor C. Menger and of his successor F. von Hayek. Also, it is placed in the continuation of one of his previous works and in contrast to one that followed it. Some of his ideas can be better understood in such a way, while others show themselves as contradictory. It results that his attempt to combine apriorism with scientific realism explains some of major difficulties of Mises’s argumentation.

The essay provides an account of the development of Reinach’s philosophy of “Sachverhalte” (states of affairs) and on problems in the philosophy of law, leading up to his discovery of the theory of speech acts in 1913. Reinach’s relations to Edmund Husserl and to the Munich phenomenologists are also dealt with.

Angesichts der modernen Wissenschaftsentwicklung schlägt Michael Friedman vor, Kants Begriff vom apriorischen Urteil zu relativieren. Ein apriorischer Satz muss laut Friedman nicht ein für allemal und mit Notwendigkeit apriori gelten; vielmehr gilt ein Satz apriori RELATIV zu der Theorie, deren Möglichkeitsbedingung er ausspricht. Meiner Ansicht nach geht diese Liberalisierung des kantischen Programms zu weit. Wir sollten uns nicht mit bloß relativ apriori gültigen Sätzen abspeisen lassen. Ich gehe über Friedmans Vorschlag hinaus, indem ich einem Satz ABSOLUTE Apriorität zuspreche, wenn er relativ zu jeder Theorie apriori gilt. Es gibt mindestens drei Beispiele für absolut apriorische Sätze: (1) "Nicht alle Sätze sind zugleich wahr und falsch". (2) "Nicht alle Veränderungen ereignen sich rein zufällig". (3) "Es gibt einen physikalischen Raum". Beispiele (2) und (3) sind überraschenderweise synthetische Urteile apriori.

Is an A Priori Synthesis Still Possible? On the Contemporary Significance of the Kant's and Husserl's Doctrines of Transcendental Synthesis Basing on the Michel Foucault's description of the philosophical modernity given by him in his famous book Words and Things (1966), I found that there is the compliance between the beginning of the Modern philosophy and the Kant's discovery of the a priori synthesis. It is also well known that Husserl uses the term " synthesis " in his phenomenology. Thus, the Husserl's phenomenology could belong to the same branch of philosophy as the Kant's philosophy. To verify this hypothesis, I analyze the views on synthesis a priori of both thinkers, Kant and Husserl, and then I compare them. One ought to say that Husserl widens the Kant's view of the synthesis a priori through his notion of material a priori as well as through his differentiation of active and passive kinds of synthesis. As conclusion, I pose the question of the possibility of a priori synthesis after Kant and Husserl, taking into account the Moritz Schlick's criticism of the synthetic propositions a priori. Keywords: synthesis a priori, representations, active and passive syntheses, formal and material a priori, Kant, Husserl

Il presente lavoro cerca di dare un resoconto complessivo, da un punto di vista eminentemente filosofico, della riflessione di Ludwig von Mises (e con essa del punto di vista della Scuola Austriaca di economia) nell'ambito dell'epistemologia delle scienze sociali. Partendo dall'eredità mengeriana, dalla  Theorie des subjektiven Wertes  e dalla rivoluzione marginalista si mostra come Mises, dal concetto fondamentale di Azione, trascendendo e amplificando l'analisi sui fondamenti della scienza economica, abbia elaborato un originale paradigma epistemologico di matrice kantiana che investe il sapere tout-court e correlato ad esso una proposta antropologica coerente che giunge fino ad  essere la base di una concreta politica economica.
(Il testo seguente contiene ampli stralci di The Ultimate Foundations of Economic Science, inedito in italiano e tradotti per la prima volta da me per questo lavoro e qui largamente analizzato)

INDICE DELL' OPERA

PROFILO BIOGRAFICO E BIBLIOGRAFICO pp. 1-8

CAPITOLO I: MISES NELLA TRADIZIONE AUSTRIACA: DAL MARGINALISMO ALLA SCIENZA GENERALE DELL’AZIONE UMANA

- 1.1 I PRODROMI DELLA PRASSEOLOGIA NELLA RIVOLUZIONE MARGINALISTA pp. 9-24
- 1.2 PRASSEOLOGIA E CATALLATTICA pp. 25-35

CAPITOLO II: LA CATEGORIA DELL’AZIONE E LO STATUTO EPISTEMOLOGICO DELLA PRASSEOLOGIA

- 2.1 LA CATEGORIA DELL’AZIONE E I SUOI ATTRIBUTI ANALITICI: L’HOMO AGENS, RAZIONALITA' E TEMPORALITA' DELL’AZIONE UMANA
pp. 36-63
- 2.2 NOMOS E TELOS: FINALISMO DELL’AZIONE UMANA E LO STATUTO EPISTEMOLOGICO DELLA PRASSEOLOGIA pp. 64-99

CAPITOLO III: HOMO AGENS: SOGGETTIVISMO, INDIVIDUALISMO, ANTROPOLOGIA

- 3.1 LA THEORIE DES SUBJEKTIVES WERTES: LA STRUTTURA DEL GIUDIZIO DI VALORE E IL PRINCIPIO DELL’ “UTILITA’RAZIONALE”
pp. 100-119
- 3.2 IL PRINCIPIO DELL’INDIVIDUALISMO METODOLOGICO: ANALISI E NATURA DELLA SOCIETA', LA RIVOLUZIONE/ASSOLUTIZZAZIONE ANTROPOLOGICA DELL’HOMO AGENS pp. 119-160

BIBLIOGRAFIA p. 161

There are certain 'hard cases' of weakness of will that seem to occur, indeed to be common, but are very difficult to give a non-paradoxical account of.  It is just not clear how they are possible.  This paper is largely an attempt to get them in focus.  What conditions must such weak-willed actions satisfy?  In what sense must they be intentional, for example?  And must the weak-willed agent thinks his action objectively worse than some alternative action open to him?  And must that alternative action actually be open to him?  The paper concludes by considering the condition that a clear case of weakness of will must be in certain sense non-procrastinatory and this turns out to be particularly difficult to satisfy.  Other explanations, ones that do not postulate weakness of will (though they may involve paradoxes of their own), always seem to be available.

The interpretive approach seems to be one of those umbrella terms that cover a multitude of extremaly diversified  strategies. At first sight they seem to have nothing in common except the blurred term interpretation and skepticism about naturalism in social sciences. Nonetheless they have solid common philosophical underpinnings that constitute the peculiarity as well as pluralism of the interpretive approach. The first one - apriorism - defines its ontology, the second - anti-Cartesianism - specifies epistemology. Both create distinctiveness toward the objective and empirical standards of scientific investigation that deserve to be called not a mere approach but a paradigm.