Hermeneutic Economics: Between Relativism and Progressive Polylogism

Tags: Philosophy and Methodology, Praxeology

07/30/2014 Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics Pierre Perrin

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Volume 8, No. 3 (Fall 2005)

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Perrin, Pierre. “Hermeneutic Economics: Between Relativism and Progressive Polylogism.” The Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics 8, No. 3 (Fall 2005): 21–38.

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Pierre Perrin

Hermeneutic Economics: Between Relativism and Progressive Polylogism

07/30/2014 Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics Pierre Perrin

Confronted with the limitations of formalism, many economists have adopted alternative epistemological approaches which are supposed to favor a better understanding of economic phenomena. Among those, hermeneutics has enjoyed a certain success. Hermeneutics is a general theory of understanding based on the interpretation of an external reality testifying to an internal subjective reality. In economics, the interpretive act (or the process of theorization) consists in the ongoing dialogic confrontation between what contemporary economists know and what the individuals under scrutiny express of their own interpretation of the world.

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