Rudolf Stolzmann’s Philosophy of Economics

Abstract

This paper deals with an economist and philosopher, who is not very well known in the literature, namely Rudolf Stolzmann. Stolzmann considered himself a representative of Neo-Kantianism and in economics he is often ascribed to the social law movement of economics. The research question in this paper deals with the late works of Stolzmann, namely, "Nature and Goals of the Philosophy of Economics." In this work, Stolzmann made use of another methodology compared to his earlier texts in which society or a sense of community is deducted from a philosophical perspective. This paper aims to show the contradictions of this deductive method. This new approach is no longer compatible with Neo-Kantian philosophy and can be associated more closely with Hegelian or Neoplatonic philosophy; which Stolzmann appears to be unaware of. Conversely, his social organic theory gains greater plausibility and credence than before. Another result of the paper can be seen in the fact that Stolzmann did not use the deductive method consistently. Beginning from the fourth chapter, it gets confusing and Stolzmann mixed the deductive method with the inductive method.

El legado metodológico de Eugen Von Böhm-Bawerk

“…Uno de los exponentes de la Escuela histórica, Rudolf Stolzmann, comenzó a valorar el papel de la componente no artificial en sus publicaciones (Lechner, 2017), algo que admite Böhm-Bawerk. Y aunque el austríaco le reconoce un mayor rigor sistemático y teórico que el del resto de pensadores de la escuela alemana, considera que Stolzmann trata de diluir la importancia de las leyes económicas todo lo posible valiéndose de su dialéctica y que el motivo real por el cual incluye la categoría natural en sus estudios es la imposibilidad de no hacerlo (Stolzmann, 1896;Stolzmann, 1909).…”