Praxeology

All human action stems from the value judgments of individuals. Economics, properly understood, was never so foolish as to believe that all that people are after is higher incomes and lower prices.

Humans use action to attain certain ends. But they must choose what actions to take. And choice also requires judgment about the best way to achieve the preferred ends. 

Mises’s unique social theory does not appear to have had any precursors. However, the French liberal Destutt de Tracy, is one author who preceded and shared Mises’s rationalist views on society.

For the positivist, a man is a machine like an automobile, and the positivist denies to his fellow men the faculty of choosing ends and the means to attain these ends.

If reading Human Action is too daunting, read this chapter-by-chapter summary of one of the greatest economic treatises ever written.

Civilization is an achievement of the 'bourgeois' spirit, not of the spirit of war and conquest.

Recorded at Mises University 2018.

G.P. Manish highlights the life and work of theologian and scholar Philip Wicksteed (1844–1927).

Some propositions need only to be stated to become at once evident to the self, and the action axiom is just such a proposition.

Furthering the discussion about “How can we reconcile the idea that there are laws of human action, that manifest themselves in market prices and the structure of production, with the idea that there is also freedom of choice?”