Methodology of the Social Sciences, Ethics, and Economics in the Newer Historical School: From Max Weber and Rickert to Sombart and Rothacker

The volume at hand gives an exposition of the tradition of the Historical School of Economics and of the Geisteswissenschaften or human sciences, the latter in their development within the Historical School as well as in Neo-Kantianism and the sociology of knowledge. It continues the discussion started in the year 1994 on the Older Historical School of Economics and the 19th century German contribution to an ethical theory of economics with the Newer Historical School of the 20th century.

Economists, social scientists, and philosophers examine the contribution of this tradition and its impact for present theory. The schools of thought and their approaches to economics as well as to the cultural and social sciences are examined here not as much for their historical interest as for their potential systematic contribution to the contemporary debates on economic ethics, economics, sociology, and philosophy.

In this volume, the debate about the German tradition of economics and of the cultural and social sciences is extended from the Historical School to other approaches in the German tradition, to Neo-Kantianism, the sociology of knowledge in Max Scheler and Karl Mannheim, and to Georg Simmel's approach to the money economy. The influence of the Historical School on other traditions of thought, in the volume at hand on the Austrian School of Economics and on American, British, Japanese and Russian economic science, is examined in addition to the presentation of the German theorists.