Praxeology

Origins, Traditions and Key Ideas

The basic principles of praxeology were first articulated by Greek moral philosophers, who applied them as a basis for a eudemonistic ethics, a concern with how knowledge might best bring virtue, happiness and flourishing, what in contemporary language we might now term well-being. For Aristotle, human well-being requires a combination of types of human endeavour, notably not just thoughts and contemplation (theoría) but also action (praxis). These types of human endeavour are differentiated by their related types of wisdom (sophía and phrónêsis). Sophía, sometimes translated as theoretical wisdom, broadly equates to reasoning and rational learning, such as mathematics, science, logic, history and so on. Phrónêsis refers to practical knowledge, the capability to act ethically, with wisdom based on experience. Praxeology, as a theory of action or practice, is the bringing together of knowledge and action, of contemplation and practice, equating to the Greek sophía and praxis, respectively. It can be understood as a kind of practical knowing. Practice in praxeology refers to knowing how not just knowing about. Knowledge is understood to be a ‘learning from action’, not a theoretical ‘learning before action’.

This approach was further developed by the Scholastics, who extended praxeological analysis to the foundations of economics and social science. Western thought continued into the present day to be influenced by a perceived dichotomy between theoría/sophía and praxis/phrónêsis.

In the late nineteenth century, a praxeological approach to economics and social science was reintroduced through Austrian economics, with the term praxeology first applied to this approach by the Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises. Praxeological economics is concerned with the study of purposeful human action in the course of consumption, in the sense of deliberately chosen behaviour by actors, such as preference, choice, creativity or incentives under a free market context. With a focus on how economic propositions came to be known, von Mises advocated a praxeological foundation to epistemology in economics, in contrast, for example, to mathematical economic models, with the rationale that without empirical testing, economic theories may be misconceived.

...