Reviews for A craving vacancy

The average rating for A craving vacancy based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2017-08-13 00:00:00 Daniel Hong 24 Oct. 2018 - I read this book between 1979 and 1984 and have very, very warm thoughts about it. It was a great re-statement by Mises about the most proper grounding of economics, in a priori logic, and his critique of the much more prevalent, but wrong, positivism of mainstream economics as well as the Milton Friedman Chicagoan school. Friedman's book "Essays in Positive Economics" came out in 1953. I don't know if that had any influence on Mises to write this book, which was a restatement, clarification and passionate defense of his ideas developed in his book "Epistemological Problems of Economics" (published in 1933 only in German, and not translated till 1960), then later used extensively in his magnum opus "Human Action."(published 1949) But perhaps. On the other hand, Friedman was not even mentioned in this book (or at least is missing from the Index). But Friedman was famously known for not engaging in debate on this subject and never returned to it, even though Mises and others had strong critiques of his ideas. Perhaps these closing words from the book may have kept him from even broaching the subject: "As far as the empiricist principle of logical positivism refers to the experimental methods of the natural sciences, it merely asserts what is not questioned by anybody. As far as it rejects the epistemological principles of the sciences of human action, it is not only entirely wrong. It is also knowingly and intentionally undermining the intellectual foundations of Western civilization."

Review # 2 was written on 2014-11-11 00:00:00 Stephen Galat A very learned book. This is certainly not for beginners. And you should already be familiar with the Misesian battles in methodology (and even with the context of his intellectual life) in order to fully understand his points. In that sense, it is a book for mature students of Austrian economics or for students of the philosophy of science and economics. One thing is for sure, Mises's impressive breadth of knowledge and culture is displayed from start to finish, even though some of his assertions may sound a bit too harsh. Even though I consider myself fairly well read in his works, I still learned many interesting insights from this book, and was pleased with some innovative ways of looking at some philosophical and "civilizational" questions. But, once again: do not jump into this one until have an idea of what epistemology means haha