The Hairpin Bend

Økonomen og filosoffen Ludwig von Mises skrev i 1949 en mastodont af et værk. Værket handlede om menneskelig adfærd, heraf navnet Human Action. Hele bogen kan læses her. Jeg er endelig blevet færdig med værket og jeg kan kun anbefale det. Mises skriver ufatteligt klart og tydeligt, og formår virkelig at levere nogle begavede kernepunkter. Jeg vil gerne publicere et uddrag af bogen. Uddraget omhandler metodologisk individualisme – et emne, jeg har beskæftiget mig en hel del med her på bloggen.

“The methodological individualism has been vehemently attacked by various metaphysical schools and disparaged as a nominalistic fallacy. The notion of an individual, say the critics, is an empty abstraction. Real man is necessarily always a member of a social whole. It is even impossible to imagine the existence of a man separated from the rest of mankind and not connected with society. Man as man is the product of a social evolution. His most eminent feature, reason, could only emerge within the framework of social mutuality. There is no thinking which does not depend on the concepts and notions of language. But speech is manifestly a social phenomenon. Man is always the member of a collective. As the whole is both logically and temporally prior to its parts or members, the study of the individual is posterior to the study of society. The only adequate method for the scientific treatment of human problems is the method of universalism or collectivism.
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First we must realize that all actions are performed by individuals. A collective operates always through the intermediary of one or several individuals whose actions are related to the collective as the secondary source. It is the meaning which the acting individuals and all those who are touched by their action attribute to an action, that determines its character. It is the meaning that marks one action as the action of an individual and another action as the action of the state or of the municipality.
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If we scrutinize the meaning of the various actions performed by individuals we must necessarily learn everything about the actions of collective wholes. For a social collective has no existence and reality outside of the individual members’ actions. The life of a collective is lived in the actions of the individuals constituting its body. There is no social collective conceivable which is not operative in the actions of some individuals. The reality of a social integer consists in its directing and releasing definite actions on the part of individuals. Thus the way to a cognition of collective wholes is through an analysis of the individuals’ actions.
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As a thinking and acting being man emerges from his prehuman existence already as a social being. The evolution of reason, language, and cooperation is the outcome of the same process; they were inseparably and necessarily linked together. But this process took place in individuals. It consisted in changes in the behavior of individuals. There is no other substance in which it occurred than the individuals. There is no substratum of society other than the actions of individuals.“

Fremragende formuleret. Læs hele bogen, da den er fyldt med fortræffelige passager og spændende holdninger. Jeg vil på et senere tidspunkt kommentere hans praxeologi.

Lad mig så endnu engang slå fast, at virkeligheden er atomistisk, hvilket medfører, at nationaliteter er et ustabilt begreb og på bunden tom retorik. Derfor giver det ikke mening at bedrive politik eller filosofi på baggrund af dette begreb. Derimod er individet ikke en filosofisk konstruktion. Individet er et håndgribeligt faktum, og derfor er individuelle præferencer så meget mere logiske og nemmere at advokere for end nationale og kollektivistiske præferencer. Verden består altså ikke af kollektiver, men af individer. Og læs så Mises’ Human Action.