Social Theory of Hoppe, Week 4: Epistemology, Methodology and Dualism

This six-week course will present and discuss Professor Hoppe's most important ideas and theories, including his brilliant critique of positivist methodology as applied to the social sciences, his groundbreaking "argumentation ethics" praxeological approach to political philosophy, his encompassing comparative analysis of socialism and capitalism, his profound critique of democracy, and a host of other insights and contributions to areas such as monopoly theory, the theory of public goods, the sociology of taxation, the private production of security, immigration, the nature of property and scarcity, economic methodology and epistemology, and the evolution of monetary institutions and their impact on international relations.

This course will be taught by Austro-libertarian legal philosopher Stephan Kinsella, who has been a close associate of Professor Hoppe for 17 years. Kinsella is uniquely qualified to teach this course, as he served as Book Review Editor of the JLS for five years under Hoppe's editorship; he founded and edits Libertarian Papers, the successor journal to the JLS; and, with Guido Hülsmann, was editor of the festschrift in Hoppe's honor, Property, Freedom, and Society: Essays in Honor of Hans-Hermann Hoppe (Mises Institute, 2009). Kinsella's previous Mises Academy courses include Rethinking Intellectual Property and Libertarian Legal Theory.

SLIDES: https://docs.google.com/present/view?...

STUDY MATERIALS:
Suggested Readings
URL A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism, Pages 118-144 and 152-155 URL
URL Economic Science and the Austrian Method URL
URL Is Research Based on Causal Scientific Principles Possible in the Social Sciences? (ch. 10 of EEPP) URL
URL In Defense of Extreme Rationalism: Thoughts on Donald McCloskey's The Rhetoric of Economics URL

Optional Readings

URL Chapter 9. "On Praxeology and the Praxeological Foundation of Epistemology"; ch. 14. "Austrian Rationalism in the Age of the Decline of Positivism" (from EEPP) URL
URL On Certainty and Uncertainty, Or: How Rational Can Our Expectations Be? URL
URL The Science of Human Action (lecture)

Feel free to leave questions in the comment section below.

(Originally posted at: http://www.libertarianstandard.com/20... )