WEBVTT NOTE II. The Epistemological Problems of the Sciences of Human Action (continued) 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:06.220 8. Conception and Understanding 2 00:00:06.220 --> 00:00:11.560 The task of the sciences of human action is the comprehension of the meaning and relevance 3 00:00:11.560 --> 00:00:18.680 of human action. They apply for this purpose two different epistemological procedures, 4 00:00:18.680 --> 00:00:25.940 conception and understanding. Conception is the mental tool of praxeology. Understanding 5 00:00:25.940 --> 00:00:30.180 is the specific mental tool of history. 6 00:00:30.180 --> 00:00:34.740 The cognition of praxeology is conceptual cognition. 7 00:00:34.740 --> 00:00:38.360 It refers to what is necessary in human action. 8 00:00:38.360 --> 00:00:42.580 It is cognition of universals and categories. 9 00:00:42.580 --> 00:00:47.980 The cognition of history refers to what is unique and individual in each event or class 10 00:00:47.980 --> 00:00:49.580 of events. 11 00:00:49.580 --> 00:00:55.260 It analyzes first each object of its studies with the aid of the mental tools provided 12 00:00:55.260 --> 00:00:57.980 by all other sciences. 13 00:00:57.980 --> 00:01:03.780 Having achieved this preliminary work, it faces its own specific problem, the elucidation 14 00:01:03.780 --> 00:01:10.300 of the unique and individual features of the case, by means of the understanding. 15 00:01:10.300 --> 00:01:15.740 As was mentioned above, it has been asserted that history can never be scientific, because 16 00:01:15.740 --> 00:01:21.180 historical understanding depends on the historian's subjective value judgments. 17 00:01:21.180 --> 00:01:27.580 Understanding, it is maintained, is only a euphemistic term for arbitrariness. 18 00:01:27.580 --> 00:01:31.860 The writings of historians are always one-sided and partial. 19 00:01:31.860 --> 00:01:33.780 They do not report the facts. 20 00:01:33.780 --> 00:01:36.180 They distort them. 21 00:01:36.180 --> 00:01:41.900 It is, of course, a fact that we have historical books written from various points of view. 22 00:01:41.900 --> 00:01:46.060 There are histories of the Reformation written from the Catholic point of view, and others 23 00:01:46.060 --> 00:01:48.940 written from the Protestant point of view. 24 00:01:48.940 --> 00:01:56.580 There are proletarian histories and bourgeois histories, Tory historians and Whig historians. 25 00:01:56.580 --> 00:02:02.540 Every nation, party and linguistic group has its own historians and its own ideas about 26 00:02:02.540 --> 00:02:03.740 history. 27 00:02:03.740 --> 00:02:08.700 But the problem which these differences of interpretation offer must not be confused 28 00:02:08.700 --> 00:02:15.460 with the intentional distortion of facts by propagandists and apologists parading as 29 00:02:15.460 --> 00:02:16.860 historians. 30 00:02:16.860 --> 00:02:22.180 These facts which can be established in an unquestionable way on the ground of the source 31 00:02:22.180 --> 00:02:28.480 material available must be established as the preliminary work of the historian. 32 00:02:28.480 --> 00:02:31.380 This is not a field for understanding. 33 00:02:31.380 --> 00:02:37.380 It is a task to be accomplished by the employment of the tools provided by all non-historical 34 00:02:37.380 --> 00:02:38.760 sciences. 35 00:02:38.760 --> 00:02:44.420 The phenomena are gathered by cautious critical observation of the records available. 36 00:02:44.420 --> 00:02:49.520 As far as the theories of the non-historical sciences on which the historian grounds his 37 00:02:49.520 --> 00:02:56.020 critical examination of the sources are reasonably reliable and certain, there cannot be any 38 00:02:56.020 --> 00:03:02.180 arbitrary disagreement with regard to the establishment of the phenomena as such. 39 00:03:02.180 --> 00:03:08.980 What a historian asserts is either correct or contrary to fact, is either proved or disproved 40 00:03:08.980 --> 00:03:14.980 by the Documents Available, or VIG because the sources do not provide us with sufficient 41 00:03:14.980 --> 00:03:16.700 information. 42 00:03:16.700 --> 00:03:22.220 The experts may disagree, but only on the ground of a reasonable interpretation of the 43 00:03:22.220 --> 00:03:24.180 evidence available. 44 00:03:24.180 --> 00:03:28.020 The discussion does not allow any arbitrary statements. 45 00:03:28.020 --> 00:03:33.580 However, the historians very often do not agree with regard to the teachings of the 46 00:03:33.580 --> 00:03:36.380 non-historical sciences. 47 00:03:36.380 --> 00:03:41.560 Then of course, disagreement with regard to the critical examination of the records and 48 00:03:41.560 --> 00:03:45.860 to the conclusions to be drawn from them can ensue. 49 00:03:45.860 --> 00:03:49.140 An unbridgeable conflict arises. 50 00:03:49.140 --> 00:03:55.360 But its cause is not an arbitrariness with regard to the concrete historical phenomenon. 51 00:03:55.360 --> 00:04:01.260 It stems from an undecided issue referring to the non-historical sciences. 52 00:04:01.260 --> 00:04:06.900 An ancient Chinese historian could report that the emperor's sin brought about a catastrophic 53 00:04:06.900 --> 00:04:12.600 drought and that rain fell again when the ruler had atoned for his sin. 54 00:04:12.600 --> 00:04:15.940 No modern historian would accept such a report. 55 00:04:15.940 --> 00:04:22.020 The underlying meteorological doctrine is contrary to uncontested fundamentals of contemporary 56 00:04:22.020 --> 00:04:24.100 natural science. 57 00:04:24.100 --> 00:04:30.140 But no such unanimity exists in regard to many theological, biological and economic 58 00:04:30.140 --> 00:04:40.900 A supporter of the racial doctrine of Nordic Aryanism will disregard as fabulous and simply 59 00:04:40.900 --> 00:04:48.100 unbelievable any report concerning intellectual and moral achievements of inferior races. 60 00:04:48.100 --> 00:04:53.100 He will treat such reports in the same way in which all modern historians deal with the 61 00:04:53.100 --> 00:04:56.060 above-mentioned Chinese report. 62 00:04:56.060 --> 00:05:01.660 No agreement with regard to any phenomenon of the history of Christianity can be attained 63 00:05:01.660 --> 00:05:07.180 between people for whom the Gospels are wholly writ and people in whose eyes they are human 64 00:05:07.180 --> 00:05:09.300 documents. 65 00:05:09.300 --> 00:05:13.940 Catholic and Protestant historians disagree about many questions of fact because they 66 00:05:13.940 --> 00:05:17.620 start from different theological ideas. 67 00:05:17.620 --> 00:05:24.220 A mercantilist or neo-mercantilist must necessarily be at variance with an economist. 68 00:05:24.220 --> 00:05:31.780 An account of German monetary history in the years 1914 to 1923 is conditioned by the author's 69 00:05:31.780 --> 00:05:33.940 monetary doctrines. 70 00:05:33.940 --> 00:05:39.140 The facts of the French Revolution are presented in a quite different manner by those who believe 71 00:05:39.140 --> 00:05:44.820 in the sacred rights of the anointed king and those who hold other views. 72 00:05:44.820 --> 00:05:50.860 The historians disagree on such issues not in their capacity as historians, but in their 73 00:05:50.860 --> 00:05:56.820 Their application of the non-historical sciences to the subject matter of history. 74 00:05:56.820 --> 00:06:02.860 They disagree as agnostic doctors disagree in regard to the miracles of lords, with the 75 00:06:02.860 --> 00:06:08.580 members of the Medical Committee for the collection of evidence concerning these miracles. 76 00:06:08.580 --> 00:06:13.940 Only those who believe that facts write their own story into the tabula rasa of the human 77 00:06:13.940 --> 00:06:18.700 mind blame the historians for such differences of opinion. 78 00:06:18.700 --> 00:06:24.240 They fail to realize that history can never be studied without presuppositions, and that 79 00:06:24.240 --> 00:06:30.640 dissension with regard to the presuppositions, that is, the whole content of the non-historical 80 00:06:30.640 --> 00:06:37.200 branches of knowledge, must determine the establishment of historical facts. 81 00:06:37.200 --> 00:06:42.800 These presuppositions also determine the historian's decision concerning the choice of facts to 82 00:06:42.800 --> 00:06:47.260 be mentioned and those to be omitted as irrelevant. 83 00:06:47.260 --> 00:06:53.000 In searching for the causes of a cow's not giving milk, a modern veterinarian will disregard 84 00:06:53.000 --> 00:06:57.960 entirely all reports concerning a witch's evil eye. 85 00:06:57.960 --> 00:07:01.500 His view would have been different 300 years ago. 86 00:07:01.500 --> 00:07:07.300 In the same way, the historian selects from the indefinite multitude of events that preceded 87 00:07:07.300 --> 00:07:13.500 the fact he is dealing with, those which could have contributed to its emergence, or have 88 00:07:13.500 --> 00:07:19.540 have delayed it, and neglects those which, according to his grasp of the non-historical 89 00:07:19.540 --> 00:07:23.340 sciences, could not have influenced it. 90 00:07:23.340 --> 00:07:28.780 Changes in the teachings of the non-historical sciences consequently must involve a rewriting 91 00:07:28.780 --> 00:07:30.660 of history. 92 00:07:30.660 --> 00:07:36.200 Every generation must treat anew the same historical problems because they appear to 93 00:07:36.200 --> 00:07:38.740 it in a different light. 94 00:07:38.740 --> 00:07:44.380 The theological worldview of older times led to a treatment of history other than the theorems 95 00:07:44.380 --> 00:07:51.500 of modern natural science. Subjective economics produces historical works very different from 96 00:07:51.500 --> 00:07:57.740 those based on mercantilist doctrines. As far as divergences in the books of historians 97 00:07:57.740 --> 00:08:03.660 stem from these disagreements, they are not an outcome of alleged vagueness and precariousness 98 00:08:03.660 --> 00:08:10.260 in Historical Studies, they are, on the contrary, the result of the lack of unanimity in the 99 00:08:10.260 --> 00:08:16.880 realm of those other sciences which are popularly called certain and exact. 100 00:08:16.880 --> 00:08:23.240 To avoid any possible misunderstanding, it is expedient to emphasize some further points. 101 00:08:23.240 --> 00:08:30.220 The divergences referred to above must not be confused, one, with purposeful, ill-intentioned 102 00:08:30.220 --> 00:08:38.580 Distortion of Facts, with attempts to justify or to condemn any actions from a legal or 103 00:08:38.580 --> 00:08:47.340 moral point of view, with the merely incidental insertion of remarks expressing value judgments 104 00:08:47.340 --> 00:08:52.140 in a strictly objective representation of the state of affairs. 105 00:08:52.140 --> 00:08:58.380 A treatise on bacteriology does not lose its objectivity if the author, accepting the human 106 00:08:58.380 --> 00:09:04.220 and Viewpoint considers the preservation of human life as an ultimate end, and applying 107 00:09:04.220 --> 00:09:10.100 this standard labels effective methods of fighting germs good and fruitless methods 108 00:09:10.100 --> 00:09:11.100 bad. 109 00:09:11.100 --> 00:09:17.260 A germ writing such a book would reverse these judgments, but the material content of its 110 00:09:17.260 --> 00:09:22.020 book would not differ from that of the human bacteriologist. 111 00:09:22.020 --> 00:09:28.220 In the same way, a European historian dealing with the Mongol invasions of the 13th century 112 00:09:28.220 --> 00:09:34.500 may speak of favorable and unfavorable events because he takes the standpoint of the European 113 00:09:34.500 --> 00:09:37.620 defenders of Western civilization. 114 00:09:37.620 --> 00:09:43.380 But this approval of one party's standard of value need not necessarily interfere with 115 00:09:43.380 --> 00:09:46.420 the material content of his study. 116 00:09:46.420 --> 00:09:51.660 It may, from the viewpoint of contemporary knowledge, be absolutely objective. 117 00:09:51.660 --> 00:09:57.900 A Mongolian historian could endorse it completely, but for such casual remarks. 118 00:09:57.900 --> 00:09:59.660 4. 119 00:09:59.660 --> 00:10:06.620 With a representation of one party's action in diplomatic or military antagonisms, the 120 00:10:06.620 --> 00:10:12.000 clash of conflicting groups can be dealt with from the point of view of the ideas, motives 121 00:10:12.000 --> 00:10:16.300 and aims which impelled either side's acts. 122 00:10:16.300 --> 00:10:20.880 For a full comprehension of what happened, it is necessary to take account of what was 123 00:10:20.880 --> 00:10:27.940 was done on both sides. The outcome was the result of the interaction of both parties. 124 00:10:27.940 --> 00:10:32.920 But in order to understand their actions, the historian must try to see things as they 125 00:10:32.920 --> 00:10:39.260 appeared to the acting men at the critical time, not only as we see them now from the 126 00:10:39.260 --> 00:10:44.700 point of view of our present-day knowledge. A history of Lincoln's policy in the weeks 127 00:10:44.700 --> 00:10:50.700 This and months preceding the outbreak of the Civil War is, of course, incomplete. 128 00:10:50.700 --> 00:10:54.220 But no historical study is complete. 129 00:10:54.220 --> 00:10:59.780 Regardless of whether the historian sympathizes with the Unionists or with the Confederates, 130 00:10:59.780 --> 00:11:05.540 or whether he is absolutely neutral, he can deal in an objective way with Lincoln's policy 131 00:11:05.540 --> 00:11:08.620 in the spring of 1861. 132 00:11:08.620 --> 00:11:13.660 Such an investigation is an indispensable preliminary to answering the broader question 133 00:11:13.660 --> 00:11:17.220 of How the Civil War Broke Out. 134 00:11:17.220 --> 00:11:23.860 Now finally, having settled these problems, it is possible to attack the genuine question, 135 00:11:23.860 --> 00:11:30.220 is there any subjective element in historical understanding, and if so, in what manner does 136 00:11:30.220 --> 00:11:34.300 it determine the result of historical studies? 137 00:11:34.300 --> 00:11:39.580 As far as the task of understanding is to establish the facts that people were motivated 138 00:11:39.580 --> 00:11:44.180 by Definite Value Judgments and aimed at definite means. 139 00:11:44.180 --> 00:11:51.020 There cannot be any disagreement among true historians, that is, people intent upon cognition 140 00:11:51.020 --> 00:11:53.100 of past events. 141 00:11:53.100 --> 00:11:59.340 There may be uncertainty because of the insufficient information provided by the sources available. 142 00:11:59.340 --> 00:12:02.540 But this has nothing to do with understanding. 143 00:12:02.540 --> 00:12:07.700 It refers to the preliminary work to be achieved by the historian. 144 00:12:07.700 --> 00:12:11.400 But understanding has a second task to fulfill. 145 00:12:11.400 --> 00:12:17.600 It must appraise the effects and the intensity of the effects brought about by an action. 146 00:12:17.600 --> 00:12:23.060 It must deal with the relevance of each motive and each action. 147 00:12:23.060 --> 00:12:28.500 Here we are faced with one of the main differences between physics and chemistry on the one hand 148 00:12:28.500 --> 00:12:32.080 and the sciences of human action on the other. 149 00:12:32.080 --> 00:12:38.080 In the realm of physical and chemical events, there exist, or at least it is generally assumed 150 00:12:38.080 --> 00:12:44.600 that there exist, constant relations between magnitudes, and man is capable of discovering 151 00:12:44.600 --> 00:12:51.380 these constants with a reasonable degree of precision by means of laboratory experiments. 152 00:12:51.380 --> 00:12:58.200 No such constant relations exist in the field of human action, outside of physical and chemical 153 00:12:58.200 --> 00:13:01.360 Technology and Therapeutics. 154 00:13:01.360 --> 00:13:06.700 For some time, economists believed that they had discovered such a constant relation in 155 00:13:06.700 --> 00:13:11.900 the effects of changes in the quantity of money upon commodity prices. 156 00:13:11.900 --> 00:13:17.420 It was asserted that a rise or fall in the quantity of money in circulation must result 157 00:13:17.420 --> 00:13:21.960 in proportional changes of commodity prices. 158 00:13:21.960 --> 00:13:28.720 Human economics has clearly and irrefutably exposed the fallaciousness of this statement. 159 00:13:28.720 --> 00:13:35.560 Those economists who want to substitute quantitative economics for what they call qualitative economics 160 00:13:35.560 --> 00:13:38.120 are utterly mistaken. 161 00:13:38.120 --> 00:13:44.960 There are in the field of economics no constant relations, and consequently no measurement 162 00:13:44.960 --> 00:13:46.720 is possible. 163 00:13:46.720 --> 00:13:52.680 If a statistician determines that a rise of 10% in the supply of potatoes in Atlantis 164 00:13:52.680 --> 00:13:59.400 at a definite time was followed by a fall of 8% in the price, he does not establish 165 00:13:59.400 --> 00:14:04.960 anything about what happened or may happen with a change in the supply of potatoes in 166 00:14:04.960 --> 00:14:08.320 another country or at another time. 167 00:14:08.320 --> 00:14:13.340 He has not measured the elasticity of demand of potatoes. 168 00:14:13.340 --> 00:14:18.700 He has established a unique and individual historical fact. 169 00:14:18.700 --> 00:14:24.480 No intelligent man can doubt that the behavior of men with regard to potatoes and every other 170 00:14:24.480 --> 00:14:27.700 commodity is variable. 171 00:14:27.700 --> 00:14:33.000 Different individuals value the same things in a different way, and valuations change 172 00:14:33.000 --> 00:14:37.300 with the same individuals, with changing conditions. 173 00:14:37.300 --> 00:14:42.640 Outside of the field of economic history, nobody ever ventured to maintain that constant 174 00:14:42.640 --> 00:14:45.820 Relations Prevail in Human History. 175 00:14:45.820 --> 00:14:51.460 It is a fact that in the armed conflicts fought in the past between Europeans and backward 176 00:14:51.460 --> 00:14:58.700 peoples of other races, one European soldier was usually a match for several native fighters. 177 00:14:58.700 --> 00:15:05.120 But nobody was ever foolish enough to measure the magnitude of European superiority. 178 00:15:05.120 --> 00:15:10.280 The impracticability of measurement is not due to the lack of technical methods for the 179 00:15:10.280 --> 00:15:12.460 establishment of measure. 180 00:15:12.460 --> 00:15:16.620 It is due to the absence of constant relations. 181 00:15:16.620 --> 00:15:22.440 If it were only caused by technical insufficiency, at least an approximate estimation would be 182 00:15:22.440 --> 00:15:24.960 possible in some cases. 183 00:15:24.960 --> 00:15:30.720 But the main fact is that there are no constant relations. 184 00:15:30.720 --> 00:15:36.260 Economics is not, as ignorant positivists repeat again and again, backward because it 185 00:15:36.260 --> 00:15:38.360 is not quantitative. 186 00:15:38.360 --> 00:15:45.000 It is not quantitative and does not measure because there are no constants. Statistical 187 00:15:45.000 --> 00:15:52.960 figures referring to economic events are historical data. They tell us what happened in a non-repeatable 188 00:15:52.960 --> 00:15:59.340 historical case. Physical events can be interpreted on the ground of our knowledge concerning 189 00:15:59.340 --> 00:16:06.720 constant relations established by experiments. Historical events are not open to such an 190 00:16:06.720 --> 00:16:13.520 The historian can enumerate all the factors which cooperated in bringing about a known 191 00:16:13.520 --> 00:16:19.400 effect and all the factors which worked against them, and may have resulted in delaying and 192 00:16:19.400 --> 00:16:22.060 mitigating the final outcome. 193 00:16:22.060 --> 00:16:28.840 But he cannot coordinate, except by understanding, the various causative factors in a quantitative 194 00:16:28.840 --> 00:16:32.000 way to the effects produced. 195 00:16:32.000 --> 00:16:38.900 We cannot, except by understanding, assign to each of n factors its role in producing 196 00:16:38.900 --> 00:16:46.220 the effect P. Understanding is in the realm of history the equivalent, as it were, of 197 00:16:46.220 --> 00:16:53.560 quantitative analysis and measurement. Technology can tell us how thick a steel plate must be 198 00:16:53.560 --> 00:16:59.720 in order not to be pierced by a bullet fired at a distance of 300 yards from a Winchester 199 00:16:59.720 --> 00:17:29.720 The Theory of Money and Credit 200 00:17:29.720 --> 00:17:32.580 under a Republican Constitution. 201 00:17:32.580 --> 00:17:38.720 Such problems do not allow any treatment other than that of understanding. 202 00:17:38.720 --> 00:17:44.680 To every historical factor, understanding tries to assign its relevance. 203 00:17:44.680 --> 00:17:50.720 In the exercise of understanding, there is no room for arbitrariness and capriciousness. 204 00:17:50.720 --> 00:17:56.360 The freedom of the historian is limited by his endeavor to provide a satisfactory explanation 205 00:17:56.360 --> 00:17:58.220 of reality. 206 00:17:58.220 --> 00:18:01.980 His guiding star must be the search for truth. 207 00:18:01.980 --> 00:18:07.380 But there necessarily enters into understanding an element of subjectivity. 208 00:18:07.380 --> 00:18:13.020 The understanding of the historian is always tinged with the marks of his personality. 209 00:18:13.020 --> 00:18:16.020 It reflects the mind of its author. 210 00:18:16.020 --> 00:18:22.880 The a priori sciences, logic, mathematics and praxeology, aim at a knowledge unconditionally 211 00:18:22.880 --> 00:18:28.900 be valid for all beings endowed with the logical structure of the human mind. 212 00:18:28.900 --> 00:18:34.880 The natural sciences aim at a cognition valid for all those beings which are not only endowed 213 00:18:34.880 --> 00:18:39.540 with the faculty of human reason, but with human senses. 214 00:18:39.540 --> 00:18:45.400 The uniformity of human logic and sensation bestows upon these branches of knowledge the 215 00:18:45.400 --> 00:18:48.520 character of universal validity. 216 00:18:48.520 --> 00:18:53.160 Which at least is the principle guiding the study of the physicists. 217 00:18:53.160 --> 00:18:58.620 Only in recent years have they begun to see the limits of their endeavors, and abandoning 218 00:18:58.620 --> 00:19:04.940 the excessive pretensions of older physicists discovered the uncertainty principle. 219 00:19:04.940 --> 00:19:11.840 They realize today that there are unobservables whose unobservability is a matter of epistemological 220 00:19:11.840 --> 00:19:14.720 principle. 221 00:19:14.720 --> 00:19:20.960 All understanding can never produce results which must be accepted by all men. 222 00:19:20.960 --> 00:19:26.720 Two historians who fully agree with regard to the teachings of the non-historical sciences 223 00:19:26.720 --> 00:19:32.280 and with regard to the establishment of the facts as far as they can be established without 224 00:19:32.280 --> 00:19:37.640 recourse to the understanding of relevance may disagree in their understanding of the 225 00:19:37.640 --> 00:19:40.300 relevance of these facts. 226 00:19:40.300 --> 00:19:46.700 They may fully agree in establishing that the factors A, B and C worked together in 227 00:19:46.700 --> 00:19:53.740 producing the effect P. Nonetheless, they can widely disagree with regard to the relevance 228 00:19:53.740 --> 00:20:00.320 of the respective contributions of A, B and C to the final outcome. 229 00:20:00.320 --> 00:20:06.000 As far as understanding aims at assigning its relevance to each factor, it is open to 230 00:20:06.000 --> 00:20:09.600 the influence of subjective judgments. 231 00:20:09.600 --> 00:20:12.400 Of course, these are not judgments of value. 232 00:20:12.400 --> 00:20:15.680 They do not express preferences of the historian. 233 00:20:15.680 --> 00:20:19.600 They are judgments of relevance. 234 00:20:19.600 --> 00:20:22.600 Historians may disagree for various reasons. 235 00:20:22.600 --> 00:20:28.040 They may hold different views with regard to the teachings of the non-historical sciences. 236 00:20:28.040 --> 00:20:33.660 They may base their reasoning on a more or less complete familiarity with the records. 237 00:20:33.660 --> 00:20:38.780 They may differ in the understanding of the motives and aims of the acting men and of 238 00:20:38.780 --> 00:20:41.660 and the means applied by them. 239 00:20:41.660 --> 00:20:46.660 All these differences are open to a settlement by objective reasoning. 240 00:20:46.660 --> 00:20:51.380 It is possible to reach a universal agreement with regard to them. 241 00:20:51.380 --> 00:20:57.060 But as far as historians disagree with regard to judgments of relevance, it is impossible 242 00:20:57.060 --> 00:21:02.180 to find a solution which all sane men must accept. 243 00:21:02.180 --> 00:21:07.200 The intellectual methods of science do not differ in kind from those applied by the common 244 00:21:07.200 --> 00:21:10.760 and Man in his Daily Mundane Reasoning. 245 00:21:10.760 --> 00:21:14.520 The scientist uses the same tools which the layman uses. 246 00:21:14.520 --> 00:21:19.320 He merely uses them more skillfully and cautiously. 247 00:21:19.320 --> 00:21:22.320 Understanding is not a privilege of the historians. 248 00:21:22.320 --> 00:21:24.280 It is everybody's business. 249 00:21:24.280 --> 00:21:29.800 In observing the conditions of his environment, everybody is a historian. 250 00:21:29.800 --> 00:21:34.560 Everybody uses understanding in dealing with the uncertainty of future events to which 251 00:21:34.560 --> 00:21:37.800 which he must adjust his own actions. 252 00:21:37.800 --> 00:21:42.220 The distinctive reasoning of the speculator is an understanding of the relevance of the 253 00:21:42.220 --> 00:21:46.180 various factors determining future events. 254 00:21:46.180 --> 00:21:51.840 And let us emphasize it even at this early point of our investigations. 255 00:21:51.840 --> 00:21:59.800 Action necessarily always aims at future and therefore uncertain conditions, and thus is 256 00:21:59.800 --> 00:22:02.800 always speculation. 257 00:22:02.800 --> 00:22:10.500 A young man looks, as it were, with the eyes of a historian, into the future. 258 00:22:10.500 --> 00:22:17.360 Natural History and Human History Cosmogony, geology and the history of biological 259 00:22:17.360 --> 00:22:23.160 changes are historical disciplines as they deal with unique events of the past. 260 00:22:23.160 --> 00:22:29.280 However, they operate exclusively with the epistemological methods of the natural sciences 261 00:22:29.280 --> 00:22:32.460 and have no need for understanding. 262 00:22:32.460 --> 00:22:38.260 They must sometimes take recourse to only approximate estimates of magnitudes, but such 263 00:22:38.260 --> 00:22:41.300 estimates are not judgments of relevance. 264 00:22:41.300 --> 00:22:48.220 They are a less perfect method of determining quantitative relations than is exact measurement. 265 00:22:48.220 --> 00:22:52.900 They must not be confused with the state of affairs in the field of human action, which 266 00:22:52.900 --> 00:22:58.020 is characterized by the absence of constant relations. 267 00:22:58.020 --> 00:23:03.580 If we speak of history, what we have in mind is only the history of human action, whose 268 00:23:03.580 --> 00:23:07.840 specific mental tool is understanding. 269 00:23:07.840 --> 00:23:12.760 The assertion that modern natural science owes all its achievements to the experimental 270 00:23:12.760 --> 00:23:17.620 method is sometimes assailed by referring to astronomy. 271 00:23:17.620 --> 00:23:23.720 Now modern astronomy is essentially an application of the physical laws experimentally discovered 272 00:23:23.720 --> 00:23:27.340 on the earth to the celestial bodies. 273 00:23:27.340 --> 00:23:31.860 In earlier days, astronomy was mainly based on the assumption that the movements of the 274 00:23:31.860 --> 00:23:39.260 celestial bodies would not change their course. Copernicus and Kepler simply tried to guess 275 00:23:39.260 --> 00:23:45.480 in what kind of curve the earth moves around the sun. As the circle was considered the 276 00:23:45.480 --> 00:23:52.700 most perfect curve, Copernicus chose it for his theory. Later, by similar guesswork, Kepler 277 00:23:52.700 --> 00:23:59.220 Never substituted the ellipse for the circle. Only since Newton's discoveries has astronomy 278 00:23:59.220 --> 00:24:04.020 become a natural science in the strict sense. 279 00:24:04.020 --> 00:24:10.140 9. On Ideal Types 280 00:24:10.140 --> 00:24:15.820 History deals with unique and unrepeatable events, with the irreversible flux of human 281 00:24:15.820 --> 00:24:22.420 affairs. A historical event cannot be described without reference to the persons involved 282 00:24:22.420 --> 00:24:25.960 and to the place and date of its occurrence. 283 00:24:25.960 --> 00:24:32.200 As far as a happening can be narrated without such a reference, it is not a historical event, 284 00:24:32.200 --> 00:24:35.120 but a fact of the natural sciences. 285 00:24:35.120 --> 00:24:41.640 The report that Professor X, on February 20, 1945, performed a certain experiment in his 286 00:24:41.640 --> 00:24:46.000 laboratory is an account of a historical event. 287 00:24:46.000 --> 00:24:51.040 The physicist believes that he is right in abstracting from the person of the experimenter 288 00:24:51.040 --> 00:24:54.360 and the date and place of the experiment. 289 00:24:54.360 --> 00:24:59.840 He relates only those circumstances which, in his opinion, are relevant for the production 290 00:24:59.840 --> 00:25:05.880 of the result achieved, and when repeated, will produce the same result again. 291 00:25:05.880 --> 00:25:12.660 He transforms the historical event into a fact of the empirical natural sciences. 292 00:25:12.660 --> 00:25:18.220 He disregards the active interference of the experimenter and tries to imagine him as an 293 00:25:18.220 --> 00:25:23.400 Indifferent Observer and Relator of Unadulterated Reality. 294 00:25:23.400 --> 00:25:29.780 It is not the task of praxeology to deal with the epistemological issues of this philosophy. 295 00:25:29.780 --> 00:25:35.700 The physicists themselves are at last on the way to discovering the flaw in the godlikeness 296 00:25:35.700 --> 00:25:39.360 they used to arrogate to themselves. 297 00:25:39.360 --> 00:25:44.660 Although unique and unrepeatable, historical events have one common feature. 298 00:25:44.660 --> 00:25:47.820 They are human action. 299 00:25:47.820 --> 00:25:50.960 History comprehends them as human actions. 300 00:25:50.960 --> 00:25:57.060 It conceives their meaning by the instrumentality of praxeological cognition, and understands 301 00:25:57.060 --> 00:26:02.100 their meaning in looking at their individual and unique features. 302 00:26:02.100 --> 00:26:07.600 What counts for history is always the meaning of the men concerned, the meaning that they 303 00:26:07.600 --> 00:26:13.960 attach to the state of affairs they want to alter, the meaning they attach to their actions, 304 00:26:13.960 --> 00:26:18.360 and the meaning they attach to the effects produced by the actions. 305 00:26:18.360 --> 00:26:24.040 The aspect from which history arranges and assorts the infinite multiplicity of events 306 00:26:24.040 --> 00:26:26.240 is their meaning. 307 00:26:26.240 --> 00:26:32.480 The only principle which it applies for the systemization of its objects, men, ideas, 308 00:26:32.480 --> 00:26:38.080 institutions, social entities and artifacts, is meaning affinity. 309 00:26:38.080 --> 00:26:45.240 According to meaning affinity, it arranges the elements into ideal types. 310 00:26:45.240 --> 00:26:50.960 Ideal types are the specific notions employed in historical research and in the representation 311 00:26:50.960 --> 00:26:52.840 of its results. 312 00:26:52.840 --> 00:26:55.560 They are concepts of understanding. 313 00:26:55.560 --> 00:27:01.080 As such, they are entirely different from praxeological categories and concepts and 314 00:27:01.080 --> 00:27:04.320 from the concepts of the natural sciences. 315 00:27:04.320 --> 00:27:10.480 An ideal type is not a class concept, because its description does not indicate the marks 316 00:27:10.480 --> 00:27:16.740 whose presence definitely and unambiguously determines class membership. 317 00:27:16.740 --> 00:27:19.920 An ideal type cannot be defined. 318 00:27:19.920 --> 00:27:25.760 It must be characterized by an enumeration of those features whose presence by and large 319 00:27:25.760 --> 00:27:32.400 decides whether, in a concrete instance, we are or are not faced with a specimen belonging 320 00:27:32.400 --> 00:27:35.720 to the Ideal Type in Question. 321 00:27:35.720 --> 00:27:41.280 It is peculiar to the ideal type that not all its characteristics need to be present 322 00:27:41.280 --> 00:27:43.840 in any one example. 323 00:27:43.840 --> 00:27:49.560 Whether or not the absence of some characteristics prevents the inclusion of a concrete specimen 324 00:27:49.560 --> 00:27:56.360 in the ideal type in question depends on a relevance judgment by understanding. 325 00:27:56.360 --> 00:28:03.120 The ideal type itself is an outcome of an understanding of the motives, ideas and aims 326 00:28:03.120 --> 00:28:08.320 of the acting individuals and of the means they apply. 327 00:28:08.320 --> 00:28:14.600 An ideal type has nothing at all to do with statistical means and averages. 328 00:28:14.600 --> 00:28:20.100 Most of the characteristics concerned are not open to a numerical determination, and 329 00:28:20.100 --> 00:28:25.260 for this reason alone they could not enter into a calculation of averages. 330 00:28:25.260 --> 00:28:31.360 But the main reason is to be seen in something else. Statistical averages denote the behavior 331 00:28:31.360 --> 00:28:39.040 of the members of a class or a type, already constituted by means of a definition or characterization 332 00:28:39.040 --> 00:28:47.100 referring to other marks, with regard to features not referred to in the definition or characterization. 333 00:28:47.100 --> 00:28:53.540 The membership of the class or type must be known before the statistician can start investigating 334 00:29:23.540 --> 00:29:26.540 are treated without the aid of ideal types. 335 00:29:26.540 --> 00:29:31.540 Even when the historian deals with an individual person or with a single event, 336 00:29:31.540 --> 00:29:35.540 he cannot avoid referring to ideal types. 337 00:29:35.540 --> 00:29:43.540 If he speaks of Napoleon, he must refer to such ideal types as commander, dictator, revolutionary leader. 338 00:29:43.540 --> 00:29:48.540 And if he deals with the French Revolution, he must refer to ideal types such as 339 00:29:48.540 --> 00:29:53.940 Revolution, Disintegration of an Established Regime, Anarchy. 340 00:29:53.940 --> 00:29:59.780 It may be that the reference to an ideal type consists merely in rejecting its applicability 341 00:29:59.780 --> 00:30:02.180 to the case in question. 342 00:30:02.180 --> 00:30:08.680 But all historical events are described and interpreted by means of ideal types. 343 00:30:08.680 --> 00:30:14.100 The layman, too, in dealing with events of the past or of the future, must always make 344 00:30:14.100 --> 00:30:19.860 Make Use of Ideal Types and Unwittingly Always Does So 345 00:30:19.860 --> 00:30:25.300 Whether or not the employment of a definite ideal type is expedient and conducive to an 346 00:30:25.300 --> 00:30:30.940 adequate grasp of phenomena can only be decided by understanding. 347 00:30:30.940 --> 00:30:36.260 It is not the ideal type which determines the mode of understanding, it is the mode 348 00:30:36.260 --> 00:30:43.700 of understanding that requires the construction and use of corresponding ideal types. 349 00:30:43.700 --> 00:30:50.220 The ideal types are constructed with the use of ideas and concepts developed by all non-historical 350 00:30:50.220 --> 00:30:52.860 branches of knowledge. 351 00:30:52.860 --> 00:30:58.580 Every cognition of history is, of course, conditioned by the findings of the other sciences, 352 00:30:58.580 --> 00:31:02.740 depends upon them, and must never contradict them. 353 00:31:02.740 --> 00:31:07.740 But historical knowledge has another subject matter and another method than these other 354 00:31:07.740 --> 00:31:12.380 sciences, and they, in turn, have no use for understanding. 355 00:31:12.380 --> 00:31:19.940 Thus, the ideal types must not be confused with concepts of the non-historical sciences. 356 00:31:19.940 --> 00:31:25.640 This is valid also with regard to the praxeological categories and concepts. 357 00:31:25.640 --> 00:31:31.260 They provide, to be sure, the indispensable mental tools for the study of history. 358 00:31:31.260 --> 00:31:37.140 However, they do not refer to the understanding of the unique and individual events which 359 00:31:37.140 --> 00:31:40.300 are the subject matter of history. 360 00:31:40.300 --> 00:31:47.800 An ideal type can therefore never be a simple adoption of a praxeological concept. 361 00:31:47.800 --> 00:31:55.140 It happens in many instances that a term used by praxeology to signify a praxeological concept 362 00:31:55.140 --> 00:32:00.180 serves to signify an ideal type for the historian. 363 00:32:00.180 --> 00:32:06.160 Then the historian uses one word for the expression of two different things. 364 00:32:06.160 --> 00:32:11.940 He applies the term sometimes to signify its praxeological connotation, but more often 365 00:32:11.940 --> 00:32:15.040 to signify an ideal type. 366 00:32:15.040 --> 00:32:20.560 In the latter case, the historian attaches to the word a meaning different from its praxeological 367 00:32:20.560 --> 00:32:21.600 meaning. 368 00:32:21.600 --> 00:32:26.840 He transforms it by transferring it to a different field of inquiry. 369 00:32:26.840 --> 00:32:29.640 The two terms connote different things. 370 00:32:29.640 --> 00:32:31.480 They are homonyms. 371 00:32:31.480 --> 00:32:39.080 The economic concept, entrepreneur, belongs to a stratum other than the ideal type, entrepreneur, 372 00:32:39.080 --> 00:32:43.720 as used by economic history and descriptive economics. 373 00:32:43.720 --> 00:32:48.740 On a third stratum lies the legal term, entrepreneur. 374 00:32:48.740 --> 00:32:55.120 The economic term, entrepreneur, is a precisely defined concept, which, in the framework of 375 00:32:55.120 --> 00:33:00.920 a theory of market economy, signifies a clearly integrated function. 376 00:33:00.920 --> 00:33:07.560 The historical, ideal type, entrepreneur, does not include the same members. Nobody 377 00:33:07.560 --> 00:33:13.680 in using it thinks of shoeshine boys, cab drivers who own their cars, small businessmen 378 00:33:13.680 --> 00:33:21.160 and small farmers. What economics establishes with regard to entrepreneurs is rigidly valid 379 00:33:21.160 --> 00:33:27.520 for all members of the class, without any regard to temporal and geographical conditions 380 00:33:27.520 --> 00:33:30.840 and to the various branches of business. 381 00:33:30.840 --> 00:33:37.120 What economic history establishes for its ideal types can differ according to the particular 382 00:33:37.120 --> 00:33:44.800 circumstances of various ages, countries, branches of business and many other conditions. 383 00:33:44.800 --> 00:33:49.160 History has little use for a general ideal type of entrepreneur. 384 00:33:49.160 --> 00:33:56.240 It is more concerned with such types as the American entrepreneur of the time of Jefferson, 385 00:33:56.240 --> 00:34:02.600 German heavy industries in the age of William II, New England textile manufacturing in the 386 00:34:02.600 --> 00:34:09.820 last decades preceding the First World War, the Protestant haute finance of Paris, self-made 387 00:34:09.820 --> 00:34:12.880 entrepreneurs and so on. 388 00:34:12.880 --> 00:34:18.860 Whether the use of a definite ideal type is to be recommended or not depends entirely 389 00:34:18.860 --> 00:34:21.320 on the mode of understanding. 390 00:34:21.320 --> 00:34:28.240 It is quite common nowadays to employ two ideal types, left-wing parties, progressives and 391 00:34:28.240 --> 00:34:31.240 right-wing parties, fascists. 392 00:34:31.240 --> 00:34:36.520 The former includes the Western democracies, some Latin American dictatorships and Russian 393 00:34:36.520 --> 00:34:38.080 Bolshevism. 394 00:34:38.080 --> 00:34:42.800 The latter, Italian fascism and German Nazism. 395 00:34:42.800 --> 00:34:48.100 This typification is the outcome of a definite mode of understanding. 396 00:34:48.100 --> 00:34:55.540 mode would contrast democracy and dictatorship. Then, Russian Bolshevism, Italian Fascism 397 00:34:55.540 --> 00:35:01.380 and German Nazism belong to the ideal type of dictatorial government, and the Western 398 00:35:01.380 --> 00:35:08.540 systems to the ideal type of democratic government. It was a fundamental mistake of the historical 399 00:35:08.540 --> 00:35:15.100 school of Wirtschaftliche Staatswissenschaften in Germany and of institutionalism in America 400 00:35:15.100 --> 00:35:23.860 to interpret economics as the characterization of the behavior of an ideal type, the homo-economicus. 401 00:35:23.860 --> 00:35:28.700 According to this doctrine, traditional or orthodox economics does not deal with the 402 00:35:28.700 --> 00:35:36.080 behavior of man as he really is and acts, but with a fictitious or hypothetical image. 403 00:35:36.080 --> 00:35:42.460 It pictures a being driven exclusively by economic motives, that is, solely by the intention 404 00:35:42.460 --> 00:35:47.460 of Making the Greatest Possible Material or Monetary Profit. 405 00:35:47.460 --> 00:35:52.420 Such a being does not have and never did have a counterpart in reality. 406 00:35:52.420 --> 00:35:56.220 It is a phantom of a spurious armchair philosophy. 407 00:35:56.220 --> 00:36:02.100 No man is exclusively motivated by the desire to become as rich as possible. 408 00:36:02.100 --> 00:36:05.800 Many are not at all influenced by this mean craving. 409 00:36:05.800 --> 00:36:13.120 It is vain to refer to such an illusory homunculus in dealing with life and history. 410 00:36:13.120 --> 00:36:19.260 Even if this really were the meaning of classical economics, the homo economicus would certainly 411 00:36:19.260 --> 00:36:21.780 not be an ideal type. 412 00:36:21.780 --> 00:36:29.320 The ideal type is not an embodiment of one side or aspect of man's various aims and desires. 413 00:36:29.320 --> 00:36:36.320 It is always the representation of complex phenomena of reality, either of men, of institutions 414 00:36:36.320 --> 00:36:39.120 or of ideologies. 415 00:36:39.120 --> 00:36:43.860 The classical economists sought to explain the formation of prices. 416 00:36:43.860 --> 00:36:48.820 They were fully aware of the fact that prices are not a product of the activities of a special 417 00:36:48.820 --> 00:36:55.380 group of people, but the result of an interplay of all members of the market society. 418 00:36:55.380 --> 00:37:00.140 This was the meaning of their statement that demand and supply determine the formation 419 00:37:00.140 --> 00:37:01.620 of prices. 420 00:37:01.620 --> 00:37:07.200 However, the classical economists failed in their endeavors to provide a satisfactory 421 00:37:07.200 --> 00:37:09.200 theory of value. 422 00:37:09.200 --> 00:37:14.340 They were at a loss to find a solution for the apparent paradox of value. 423 00:37:14.340 --> 00:37:20.260 They were puzzled by the alleged paradox that gold is more highly valued than iron, although 424 00:37:20.260 --> 00:37:23.420 the latter is more useful than the former. 425 00:37:23.420 --> 00:37:29.420 Thus, they could not construct a general theory of value and could not trace back the phenomena 426 00:37:29.420 --> 00:37:36.740 of market exchange and of production to their ultimate sources, the behavior of the consumers. 427 00:37:36.740 --> 00:37:41.820 This shortcoming forced them to abandon their ambitious plan to develop a general theory 428 00:37:41.820 --> 00:37:43.780 of human action. 429 00:37:43.780 --> 00:37:49.460 They had to satisfy themselves with a theory explaining only the activities of the businessman 430 00:37:49.460 --> 00:37:54.940 without going back to the choices of everybody as the ultimate determinants. 431 00:37:54.940 --> 00:38:00.580 They dealt only with the actions of businessmen eager to buy in the cheapest market and to 432 00:38:00.580 --> 00:38:02.740 sell in the dearest. 433 00:38:02.740 --> 00:38:06.860 The consumer was left outside the field of their theorizing. 434 00:38:06.860 --> 00:38:13.180 Later, the epigones of classical economics explained and justified this insufficiency 435 00:38:13.180 --> 00:38:17.840 as an intentional and methodologically necessary procedure. 436 00:38:17.840 --> 00:38:23.580 It was, they asserted, the deliberate design of the economists to restrict their investigations 437 00:38:23.580 --> 00:38:30.320 to only one aspect of human endeavor, namely to the economic aspect. 438 00:38:30.320 --> 00:38:36.840 It was their intention to use the fictitious image of a man driven solely by economic motives, 439 00:38:36.840 --> 00:38:41.740 and to neglect all others, although they were fully aware of the fact that real men are 440 00:38:41.740 --> 00:38:46.160 driven by many other non-economic motives. 441 00:38:46.160 --> 00:38:51.080 To deal with these other motives, one group of these interpreters maintained, is not the 442 00:38:51.080 --> 00:38:55.640 task of economics, but of other branches of knowledge. 443 00:38:55.640 --> 00:39:00.440 Another group admitted that the treatment of these non-economic motives and their influence 444 00:39:00.440 --> 00:39:07.160 on the formation of prices was a task of economics also, but they believed that it must be left 445 00:39:07.160 --> 00:39:09.660 to later generations. 446 00:39:09.660 --> 00:39:15.560 It will be shown at a later stage of our investigations that this distinction between economic and 447 00:39:15.560 --> 00:39:20.480 and Non-Economic Motives of Human Action is untenable. 448 00:39:20.480 --> 00:39:25.760 At this point, it is only important to realize that this doctrine of the economic side of 449 00:39:25.760 --> 00:39:31.760 human action utterly misrepresents the teachings of the classical economists. 450 00:39:31.760 --> 00:39:36.200 They never intended to do what this doctrine ascribes to them. 451 00:39:36.200 --> 00:39:42.440 They wanted to conceive the real formation of prices, not fictitious prices as they would 452 00:39:42.440 --> 00:39:47.760 be determined if men were acting under the sway of hypothetical conditions different 453 00:39:47.760 --> 00:39:50.780 from those really influencing them. 454 00:39:50.780 --> 00:39:56.360 The prices they try to explain, and do explain, although without tracing them back to the 455 00:39:56.360 --> 00:40:01.680 choices of the consumers, are real market prices. 456 00:40:01.680 --> 00:40:08.360 The demand and supply of which they speak are real factors, determined by all motives, 457 00:40:08.360 --> 00:40:12.040 instigating men to buy or to sell. 458 00:40:12.040 --> 00:40:16.920 What was wrong with their theory was that they did not trace demand back to the choices 459 00:40:16.920 --> 00:40:18.800 of the consumers. 460 00:40:18.800 --> 00:40:22.600 They lacked a satisfactory theory of demand. 461 00:40:22.600 --> 00:40:28.440 But it was not their idea that demand as they used this concept in their dissertations was 462 00:40:28.440 --> 00:40:35.960 exclusively determined by economic motives as distinguished from non-economic motives. 463 00:40:35.960 --> 00:40:40.760 As they restricted their theorizing to the actions of businessmen, they did not deal 464 00:40:40.760 --> 00:41:02.240 Modern subjective economics starts with the solution of the apparent paradox of value. 465 00:41:02.240 --> 00:41:08.160 It neither limits its theorems to the actions of businessmen alone, nor deals with a fictitious 466 00:41:08.160 --> 00:41:10.400 homo economicus. 467 00:41:10.400 --> 00:41:15.000 It treats the inexorable categories of everybody's action. 468 00:41:15.000 --> 00:41:20.560 Its theorems concerning commodity prices, wage rates and interest rates refer to all 469 00:41:20.560 --> 00:41:26.900 these phenomena without any regard to the motives causing people to buy or to sell, 470 00:41:26.900 --> 00:41:30.480 or to abstain from buying or selling. 471 00:41:30.480 --> 00:41:37.560 It is time to discard entirely any reference to the abortive attempt to justify the shortcomings 472 00:41:37.560 --> 00:41:55.280 The Scope of Praxeology is the explication of the category of human action. 473 00:41:55.280 --> 00:42:00.280 All that is needed for the deduction of all praxeological theorems is knowledge of the 474 00:42:00.280 --> 00:42:02.280 essence of human action. 475 00:42:02.280 --> 00:42:07.000 It is a knowledge that is our own because we are men. 476 00:42:07.000 --> 00:42:13.060 No being of human descent that pathological conditions have not reduced to a merely vegetative 477 00:42:13.060 --> 00:42:15.700 existence lacks it. 478 00:42:15.700 --> 00:42:21.620 No special experience is needed in order to comprehend these theorems, and no experience, 479 00:42:21.620 --> 00:42:27.900 however rich, could disclose them to a being who did not know a priori what human action 480 00:42:27.900 --> 00:42:29.500 is. 481 00:42:29.500 --> 00:42:35.660 The only way to a cognition of these theorems is logical analysis of our inherent knowledge 482 00:42:35.660 --> 00:42:38.220 of the Category of Action. 483 00:42:38.220 --> 00:42:44.120 We must be-think ourselves and reflect upon the structure of human action. 484 00:42:44.120 --> 00:42:48.960 Like logic and mathematics, praxeological knowledge is in us. 485 00:42:48.960 --> 00:42:52.260 It does not come from without. 486 00:42:52.260 --> 00:42:58.740 All the concepts and theorems of praxeology are implied in the Category of Human Action. 487 00:42:58.740 --> 00:43:04.640 The first task is to extract and to deduce them, to expound their implications and to 488 00:43:04.640 --> 00:43:09.520 to define the universal conditions of acting as such. 489 00:43:09.520 --> 00:43:15.640 Having shown what conditions are required by any action, one must go further and define, 490 00:43:15.640 --> 00:43:21.840 of course in a categorical and formal sense, the less general conditions required for special 491 00:43:21.840 --> 00:43:24.360 modes of acting. 492 00:43:24.360 --> 00:43:30.440 It would be possible to deal with this second task by delineating all thinkable conditions 493 00:43:30.440 --> 00:43:35.320 and deducing from them all inferences logically permissible. 494 00:43:35.320 --> 00:43:40.800 Such an all-comprehensive system would provide a theory referring not only to human action 495 00:43:40.800 --> 00:43:46.260 as it is under the conditions and circumstances given in the real world in which man lives 496 00:43:46.260 --> 00:43:47.880 and acts. 497 00:43:47.880 --> 00:43:53.720 It would deal no less with hypothetical acting, such as would take place under the unrealizable 498 00:43:53.720 --> 00:43:57.000 conditions of imaginary worlds. 499 00:43:57.000 --> 00:44:00.420 But the end of science is to know reality. 500 00:44:00.420 --> 00:44:04.460 It is not mental gymnastics or a logical pastime. 501 00:44:04.460 --> 00:44:10.380 Therefore, praxeology restricts its inquiries to the study of acting under those conditions 502 00:44:10.380 --> 00:44:14.860 and presuppositions which are given in reality. 503 00:44:14.860 --> 00:44:22.360 It studies acting under unrealized and unrealizable conditions only from two points of view. 504 00:44:22.360 --> 00:44:28.180 It deals with states of affairs which, although not real in the present and past world, could 505 00:44:28.180 --> 00:44:34.860 would possibly become real at some future date, and it examines unreal and unrealizable 506 00:44:34.860 --> 00:44:41.220 conditions if such an inquiry is needed for a satisfactory grasp of what is going on under 507 00:44:41.220 --> 00:44:43.900 the conditions present in reality. 508 00:44:43.900 --> 00:44:50.580 However, this reference to experience does not impair the a prioristic character of praxeology 509 00:44:50.580 --> 00:44:53.280 and economics. 510 00:44:53.280 --> 00:45:00.000 This merely directs our curiosity toward certain problems and diverts it from other problems. 511 00:45:00.000 --> 00:45:05.720 It tells us what we should explore, but it does not tell us how we could proceed in our 512 00:45:05.720 --> 00:45:07.480 search for knowledge. 513 00:45:07.480 --> 00:45:15.060 Moreover, it is not experience but thinking alone which teaches us that, and in what instances, 514 00:45:15.060 --> 00:45:21.160 it is necessary to investigate unrealizable hypothetical conditions in order to conceive 515 00:45:21.160 --> 00:45:30.860 The Disutility of Labor is not of a categorical and aprioristic character. 516 00:45:30.860 --> 00:45:36.680 We can, without contradiction, think of a world in which labor does not cause uneasiness, 517 00:45:36.680 --> 00:45:41.040 and we can depict the state of affairs prevailing in such a world. 518 00:45:41.040 --> 00:45:45.980 But the real world is conditioned by the disutility of labor. 519 00:45:45.980 --> 00:45:51.080 Only theorems based on the assumption that labor is a source of uneasiness are applicable 520 00:45:51.080 --> 00:46:02.980 Experience teaches that there is disutility of labor, but it does not teach it directly. 521 00:46:02.980 --> 00:46:08.360 There is no phenomenon that introduces itself as disutility of labor. 522 00:46:08.360 --> 00:46:14.620 There are only data of experience which are interpreted on the ground of aprioristic knowledge 523 00:46:14.620 --> 00:46:21.580 to mean that men consider leisure, that is, the absence of labor, other things being equal, 524 00:46:21.580 --> 00:46:26.140 as a more desirable condition than the expenditure of labor. 525 00:46:26.140 --> 00:46:31.740 We see that men renounce advantages, which they could get by working more, that is, that 526 00:46:31.740 --> 00:46:36.420 they are ready to make sacrifices for the attainment of leisure. 527 00:46:36.420 --> 00:46:43.760 We infer from this fact that leisure is valued as a good and that labor is regarded as a burden. 528 00:46:43.760 --> 00:46:48.960 But for previous praxeological insight, we would never be in a position to reach this 529 00:46:48.960 --> 00:46:50.720 conclusion. 530 00:46:50.720 --> 00:46:56.500 A theory of indirect exchange, and all further theories built upon it, as of the theory of 531 00:46:56.500 --> 00:47:02.260 circulation credit, are applicable only to the interpretation of events within a world 532 00:47:02.260 --> 00:47:06.040 in which indirect exchange is practiced. 533 00:47:06.040 --> 00:47:11.540 In a world of barter trade only, it would be mere intellectual play. 534 00:47:11.540 --> 00:47:16.500 It is unlikely that the economists of such a world, if economic science could have emerged 535 00:47:16.500 --> 00:47:22.380 at all in it, would have given any thought to the problems of indirect exchange, money 536 00:47:22.380 --> 00:47:24.300 and all the rest. 537 00:47:24.300 --> 00:47:30.600 In our actual world, however, it is an essential part of economic theory. 538 00:47:30.600 --> 00:47:36.240 The fact that praxeology, in fixing its eye on the comprehension of reality, concentrates 539 00:47:36.240 --> 00:47:41.560 Based upon the investigation of those problems which are useful for this purpose, does not 540 00:47:41.560 --> 00:47:48.400 alter the aprioristic character of its reasoning, but it marks the way in which economics, up 541 00:47:48.400 --> 00:47:56.800 to now the only elaborated part of praxeology, presents the results of its endeavors. 542 00:47:56.800 --> 00:48:01.200 Economics does not follow the procedure of logic and mathematics. 543 00:48:01.200 --> 00:48:07.880 does not present an integrated system of pure a prioristic ratiocination severed from any 544 00:48:07.880 --> 00:48:10.420 reference to reality. 545 00:48:10.420 --> 00:48:15.560 In introducing assumptions into its reasoning, it satisfies itself that the treatment of 546 00:48:15.560 --> 00:48:22.000 the assumptions concerned can render useful services for the comprehension of reality. 547 00:48:22.000 --> 00:48:28.420 It does not strictly separate in its treatises and monographs pure science from the application 548 00:48:28.420 --> 00:48:40.940 It adopts for the organized presentation of its results a form in which aprioristic theory 549 00:48:40.940 --> 00:48:46.420 and the interpretation of historical phenomena are intertwined. 550 00:48:46.420 --> 00:48:51.620 It is obvious that this mode of procedure is enjoined upon economics by the very nature 551 00:48:51.620 --> 00:48:54.660 and essence of its subject matter. 552 00:48:54.660 --> 00:48:57.340 It has given proof of its expediency. 553 00:48:57.340 --> 00:49:03.540 However, one must not overlook the fact that the manipulation of this singular and logically 554 00:49:03.540 --> 00:49:10.700 somewhat strange procedure requires caution and subtlety, and that uncritical and superficial 555 00:49:10.700 --> 00:49:17.560 minds have again and again been led astray by careless confusion of the two epistemologically 556 00:49:17.560 --> 00:49:20.800 different methods implied. 557 00:49:20.800 --> 00:49:27.400 There are no such things as a historical method of economics, or a discipline of institutional 558 00:49:27.400 --> 00:49:29.200 economics. 559 00:49:29.200 --> 00:49:32.600 There is economics, and there is economic history. 560 00:49:32.600 --> 00:49:35.760 The two must never be confused. 561 00:49:35.760 --> 00:49:41.780 All theorems of economics are necessarily valid in every instance in which all the assumptions 562 00:49:41.780 --> 00:49:44.460 presupposed are given. 563 00:49:44.460 --> 00:49:49.320 Of course, they have no practical significance in situations where these conditions are not 564 00:49:49.320 --> 00:49:51.120 is established. 565 00:49:51.120 --> 00:49:56.600 The theorems referring to indirect exchange are not applicable to conditions where there 566 00:49:56.600 --> 00:49:59.360 is no indirect exchange. 567 00:49:59.360 --> 00:50:02.680 But this does not impair their validity. 568 00:50:02.680 --> 00:50:08.120 The issue has been obfuscated by the endeavors of governments and powerful pressure groups 569 00:50:08.120 --> 00:50:12.680 to disparage economics and to defame the economists. 570 00:50:12.680 --> 00:50:16.760 Princes and democratic majorities are drunk with power. 571 00:50:16.760 --> 00:50:21.960 They must reluctantly admit that they are subject to the laws of nature, but they reject 572 00:50:21.960 --> 00:50:24.980 the very notion of economic law. 573 00:50:24.980 --> 00:50:27.720 Are they not the supreme legislators? 574 00:50:27.720 --> 00:50:31.160 Don't they have the power to crush every opponent? 575 00:50:31.160 --> 00:50:36.960 No warlord is prone to acknowledge any limits other than those imposed on him by a superior 576 00:50:36.960 --> 00:50:39.640 armed force. 577 00:50:39.640 --> 00:50:44.880 Servile scribblers are always ready to foster such complacency by expounding the appropriate 578 00:50:44.880 --> 00:50:46.360 doctrines. 579 00:50:46.360 --> 00:50:51.080 They call their garbled presumptions historical economics. 580 00:50:51.080 --> 00:50:56.580 In fact, economic history is a long record of government policies that failed because 581 00:50:56.580 --> 00:51:01.760 they were designed with a bold disregard for the laws of economics. 582 00:51:01.760 --> 00:51:07.180 It is impossible to understand the history of economic thought if one does not pay attention 583 00:51:07.180 --> 00:51:14.100 to the fact that economics as such is a challenge to the conceit of those in power. 584 00:51:14.100 --> 00:51:18.860 An economist can never be a favorite of autocrats and demagogues. 585 00:51:18.860 --> 00:51:24.060 With them, he is always the mischief-maker, and the more they are inwardly convinced that 586 00:51:24.060 --> 00:51:28.920 his objections are well-founded, the more they hate him. 587 00:51:28.920 --> 00:51:34.300 In the face of all this frenzied agitation, it is expedient to establish the fact that 588 00:51:34.300 --> 00:51:40.260 the starting point of all praxeological and economic reasoning, the category of human 589 00:51:40.260 --> 00:51:45.700 and Action is proof against any criticisms and objections. 590 00:51:45.700 --> 00:51:52.940 No appeal to any historical or empirical considerations whatever can discover any fault in the proposition 591 00:51:52.940 --> 00:51:57.820 that men purposefully aim at certain chosen ends. 592 00:51:57.820 --> 00:52:03.620 No talk about irrationality, the unfathomable depths of the human soul, the spontaneity 593 00:52:03.620 --> 00:52:10.540 of the Phenomena of Life, automatisms, reflexes and tropisms can invalidate the statement 594 00:52:10.540 --> 00:52:16.660 that man makes use of his reason for the realization of wishes and desires. 595 00:52:16.660 --> 00:52:22.660 From the unshakable foundation of the category of human action, praxeology and economics 596 00:52:22.660 --> 00:52:27.780 proceed step by step by means of discursive reasoning. 597 00:52:27.780 --> 00:52:34.860 Precisely defining assumptions and conditions, they construct a system of concepts and draw 598 00:52:34.860 --> 00:52:40.860 all the inferences implied by logically unassailable ratiocination. 599 00:52:40.860 --> 00:52:46.140 With regard to the results thus obtained, only two attitudes are possible. 600 00:52:46.140 --> 00:52:51.260 Either one can unmask logical errors in the chain of the deductions which produce these 601 00:52:51.260 --> 00:52:56.900 results, or one must acknowledge their correctness and validity. 602 00:52:56.900 --> 00:53:01.700 It is vain to object that life and reality are not logical. 603 00:53:01.700 --> 00:53:05.580 Life and reality are neither logical nor illogical. 604 00:53:05.580 --> 00:53:07.480 They are simply given. 605 00:53:07.480 --> 00:53:13.340 But logic is the only tool available to man for the comprehension of both. 606 00:53:13.340 --> 00:53:18.620 It is vain to object that life and history are inscrutable and ineffable, and that human 607 00:53:18.620 --> 00:53:22.380 reason can never penetrate to their inner core. 608 00:53:22.380 --> 00:53:28.240 The critics contradict themselves in uttering words about the ineffable and expounding theories, 609 00:53:28.240 --> 00:53:32.340 of course spurious theories, about the unfathomable. 610 00:53:32.340 --> 00:53:37.060 There are many things beyond the reach of the human mind, but as far as man is able 611 00:53:37.060 --> 00:53:43.880 to attain any knowledge, however limited, he can use only one avenue of approach, that 612 00:53:43.880 --> 00:53:46.340 opened by reason. 613 00:53:46.340 --> 00:53:51.060 So less illusory are the endeavors to play off understanding against the theorems of 614 00:53:51.060 --> 00:53:52.760 economics. 615 00:53:52.760 --> 00:53:58.220 The domain of historical understanding is exclusively the elucidation of those problems 616 00:53:58.220 --> 00:54:04.900 which cannot be entirely elucidated by the non-historical sciences. 617 00:54:04.900 --> 00:54:11.260 Understanding must never contradict the theories developed by the non-historical sciences. 618 00:54:11.260 --> 00:54:16.220 Understanding can never do anything but, on the one hand, establish the fact that people 619 00:54:16.220 --> 00:54:22.660 were motivated by certain ideas, aimed at certain ends, and applied certain means for 620 00:54:22.660 --> 00:54:28.500 the attainment of these ends, and, on the other hand, assign to the various historical 621 00:54:28.500 --> 00:54:36.340 factors their relevance, so far as this cannot be achieved by the non-historical sciences. 622 00:54:36.340 --> 00:54:42.340 Ludwig does not entitle the modern historian to assert that exorcism ever was an appropriate 623 00:54:42.340 --> 00:54:45.060 means to cure sick cows. 624 00:54:45.060 --> 00:54:50.660 Neither does it permit him to maintain that an economic law was not valid in ancient Rome 625 00:54:50.660 --> 00:54:54.380 or in the empire of the Incas. 626 00:54:54.380 --> 00:54:56.340 Man is not infallible. 627 00:54:56.340 --> 00:55:01.860 He searches for truth, that is, for the most adequate comprehension of reality as far as 628 00:55:01.860 --> 00:55:09.240 Man can never become omniscient. 629 00:55:09.240 --> 00:55:14.420 He can never be absolutely certain that his inquiries were not misled, and that what he 630 00:55:14.420 --> 00:55:18.300 considers a certain truth is not error. 631 00:55:18.300 --> 00:55:26.380 All that man can do is submit all his theories again and again to the most critical re-examination. 632 00:55:26.380 --> 00:55:32.140 This means for the economist to trace back all theorems to their unquestionable and certain 633 00:55:32.140 --> 00:55:39.540 ultimate basis, the category of human action, and to test by the most careful scrutiny all 634 00:55:39.540 --> 00:55:45.540 assumptions and inferences leading from this basis to the theorem under examination. 635 00:55:45.540 --> 00:55:51.780 It cannot be contended that this procedure is a guarantee against error, but it is undoubtedly 636 00:55:51.780 --> 00:55:56.900 Probably the most effective method of avoiding error. 637 00:55:56.900 --> 00:56:02.320 Praxeology and consequently economics, too, is a deductive system. 638 00:56:02.320 --> 00:56:08.600 It draws its strength from the starting point of its deductions, from the category of action. 639 00:56:08.600 --> 00:56:14.880 No economic theorem can be considered sound that is not solidly fastened upon this foundation 640 00:56:14.880 --> 00:56:18.120 by an irrefutable chain of reasoning. 641 00:56:18.120 --> 00:56:24.280 A statement proclaimed without such a connection is arbitrary and floats in mid-air. 642 00:56:24.280 --> 00:56:29.760 It is impossible to deal with a special segment of economics if one does not encase it in 643 00:56:29.760 --> 00:56:32.960 a complete system of action. 644 00:56:32.960 --> 00:56:39.000 The empirical sciences start from singular events and proceed from the unique and individual 645 00:56:39.000 --> 00:56:41.140 to the more universal. 646 00:56:41.140 --> 00:56:44.400 Their treatment is subject to specialization. 647 00:56:44.400 --> 00:56:49.180 They can deal with segments without paying attention to the whole field. 648 00:56:49.180 --> 00:56:52.660 The economist must never be a specialist. 649 00:56:52.660 --> 00:56:59.700 In dealing with any problem, he must always fix his glance upon the whole system. 650 00:56:59.700 --> 00:57:02.740 Historians often sin in this respect. 651 00:57:02.740 --> 00:57:06.060 They are ready to invent theorems ad hoc. 652 00:57:06.060 --> 00:57:11.940 They sometimes fail to recognize that it is impossible to abstract any causal relations 653 00:57:11.940 --> 00:57:15.200 from the Study of Complex Phenomena. 654 00:57:15.200 --> 00:57:21.500 Their pretension to investigate reality without any reference to what they disparage as preconceived 655 00:57:21.500 --> 00:57:23.840 ideas is vain. 656 00:57:23.840 --> 00:57:32.140 In fact, they unwittingly apply popular doctrines long since unmasked as fallacious and contradictory. 657 00:57:32.140 --> 00:57:33.660 11. 658 00:57:33.660 --> 00:57:38.580 The Limitations on Praxeological Concepts. 659 00:57:38.580 --> 00:57:44.940 The praxeological categories and concepts are devised for the comprehension of human action. 660 00:57:44.940 --> 00:57:50.220 They become self-contradictory and nonsensical if one tries to apply them in dealing with 661 00:57:50.220 --> 00:57:54.240 conditions different from those of human life. 662 00:57:54.240 --> 00:58:00.460 The naive anthropomorphism of primitive religions is unpalatable to the philosophic mind. 663 00:58:00.460 --> 00:58:06.140 However, the endeavors of philosophers to define neatly the attributes of an absolute 664 00:58:06.140 --> 00:58:12.900 being free from all the limitations and frailties of human existence by the use of praxeological 665 00:58:12.900 --> 00:58:17.300 concepts are no less questionable. 666 00:58:17.300 --> 00:58:22.340 Scholastic philosophers and theologians, and likewise theists and deists of the Age of 667 00:58:22.340 --> 00:58:29.580 Reason, conceived an absolute and perfect being, unchangeable, omnipotent and omniscient, 668 00:58:29.580 --> 00:58:35.620 and yet planning and acting, aiming at ends and employing means for the attainment of 669 00:58:35.620 --> 00:58:37.540 of these ends. 670 00:58:37.540 --> 00:58:44.700 But action can only be imputed to a discontented being, and repeated action only to a being 671 00:58:44.700 --> 00:58:51.300 who lacks the power to remove his uneasiness once and for all at one stroke. 672 00:58:51.300 --> 00:58:56.860 An acting being is discontented, and therefore not almighty. 673 00:58:56.860 --> 00:59:02.060 If he were contented, he would not act, and if he were almighty, he would have long since 674 00:59:02.060 --> 00:59:05.340 radically removed his discontent. 675 00:59:05.340 --> 00:59:12.040 For an all-powerful being there is no pressure to choose between various states of uneasiness. 676 00:59:12.040 --> 00:59:16.640 He is not under the necessity of acquiescing in the lesser evil. 677 00:59:16.640 --> 00:59:22.240 Omnipotence would mean the power to achieve everything and to enjoy full satisfaction 678 00:59:22.240 --> 00:59:26.080 without being restrained by any limitations. 679 00:59:26.080 --> 00:59:30.620 But this is incompatible with the very concept of action. 680 00:59:30.620 --> 00:59:36.560 For an Almighty Being, the categories of ends and means do not exist. 681 00:59:36.560 --> 00:59:42.400 He is above all human comprehension, concepts and understanding. 682 00:59:42.400 --> 00:59:47.460 For the Almighty Being, every means renders unlimited services. 683 00:59:47.460 --> 00:59:51.720 He can apply every means for the attainment of any ends. 684 00:59:51.720 --> 00:59:56.000 He can achieve every end without the employment of any means. 685 00:59:56.000 --> 01:00:02.300 It is beyond the faculties of the human mind to think the concept of all-mightiness consistently 686 01:00:02.300 --> 01:00:05.300 to its ultimate logical consequences. 687 01:00:05.300 --> 01:00:08.060 The paradoxes are insoluble. 688 01:00:08.060 --> 01:00:14.260 Has the Almighty being the power to achieve something which is immune to his later interference? 689 01:00:14.260 --> 01:00:20.380 If he has this power, then there are limits to his might, and he is no longer Almighty. 690 01:00:20.380 --> 01:00:26.900 If he lacks this power, he is by virtue of this fact alone, not almighty. 691 01:00:26.900 --> 01:00:30.640 Are omnipotence and omniscience compatible? 692 01:00:30.640 --> 01:00:36.760 Omniscience presupposes that all future happenings are already unalterably determined. 693 01:00:36.760 --> 01:00:41.480 If there is omniscience, omnipotence is inconceivable. 694 01:00:41.480 --> 01:00:46.820 Impotence to change anything in the predetermined course of events would restrict the power 695 01:00:46.820 --> 01:00:49.640 of any agent. 696 01:00:49.640 --> 01:00:54.700 Man is a display of potency and control that are limited. 697 01:00:54.700 --> 01:01:01.080 It is a manifestation of man who is restrained by the circumscribed powers of his mind, the 698 01:01:01.080 --> 01:01:06.880 physiological nature of his body, the vicissitudes of his environment, and the scarcity of the 699 01:01:06.880 --> 01:01:11.120 external factors on which his welfare depends. 700 01:01:11.120 --> 01:01:17.400 It is vain to refer to the imperfections and weaknesses of human life if one aims at depicting 701 01:01:17.400 --> 01:01:26.440 The very idea of absolute perfection is, in every way, self-contradictory. 702 01:01:26.440 --> 01:01:33.760 The state of absolute perfection must be conceived as complete, final, and not exposed to any 703 01:01:33.760 --> 01:01:35.220 change. 704 01:01:35.220 --> 01:01:41.220 Change could only impair its perfection and transform it into a less perfect state. 705 01:01:41.220 --> 01:01:47.060 The mere possibility that a change can occur is incompatible with the concept of absolute 706 01:01:47.060 --> 01:01:48.860 perfection. 707 01:01:48.860 --> 01:01:55.460 But the absence of change, that is, perfect immutability, rigidity and immobility, is 708 01:01:55.460 --> 01:01:58.880 tantamount to the absence of life. 709 01:01:58.880 --> 01:02:04.780 Life and perfection are incompatible, but so are death and perfection. 710 01:02:04.780 --> 01:02:08.660 The living is not perfect because it is liable to change. 711 01:02:08.660 --> 01:02:13.420 The dead is not perfect, because it does not live. 712 01:02:13.420 --> 01:02:19.660 The language of living and acting men can form comparatives and superlatives in comparing 713 01:02:19.660 --> 01:02:21.140 degrees. 714 01:02:21.140 --> 01:02:26.240 But absoluteness is not a degree, it is a limiting notion. 715 01:02:26.240 --> 01:02:31.380 The absolute is indeterminable, unthinkable, and ineffable. 716 01:02:31.380 --> 01:02:33.980 It is a chimerical conception. 717 01:02:33.980 --> 01:02:40.360 There are no such things as perfect happiness, perfect men, eternal bliss. 718 01:02:40.360 --> 01:02:45.860 Every attempt to describe the conditions of a land of cocaine or the life of the angels 719 01:02:45.860 --> 01:02:48.300 results in paradoxes. 720 01:02:48.300 --> 01:02:52.980 Where there are conditions, there are limitations and not perfection. 721 01:02:52.980 --> 01:02:55.740 There are endeavors to conquer obstacles. 722 01:02:55.740 --> 01:02:59.940 There are frustration and discontent. 723 01:02:59.940 --> 01:03:05.740 After the philosophers had abandoned the search for the absolute, the utopians took it up. 724 01:03:05.740 --> 01:03:09.020 They weave dreams about the perfect state. 725 01:03:09.020 --> 01:03:15.100 They do not realize that the state, the social apparatus of compulsion and coercion, is an 726 01:03:15.100 --> 01:03:21.220 institution to cope with human imperfection, and that its essential function is to inflict 727 01:03:21.220 --> 01:03:27.500 punishment upon minorities in order to protect majorities against the detrimental consequences 728 01:03:27.500 --> 01:03:29.780 of certain actions. 729 01:03:29.780 --> 01:03:35.420 With perfect men, there would not be any need for compulsion and coercion. 730 01:03:35.420 --> 01:03:42.340 But utopians do not pay heed to human nature and the inalterable conditions of human life. 731 01:03:42.340 --> 01:03:48.180 Godwin thought that man might become immortal after the abolition of private property. 732 01:03:48.180 --> 01:03:54.580 Charles Fourier babbled about the ocean containing lemonade instead of salt water. 733 01:03:54.580 --> 01:03:59.660 Marx's economic system blithely ignored the fact of the scarcity of material factors 734 01:03:59.660 --> 01:04:06.180 of Production, Trotsky revealed that in the proletarian paradise the average human type 735 01:04:06.180 --> 01:04:12.220 will rise to the heights of an Aristotle, a Goethe or a Marx, and above this ridge new 736 01:04:12.220 --> 01:04:20.920 peaks will rise. Nowadays the most popular chimeras are stabilization and security. We 737 01:04:20.920 --> 01:04:23.280 We will test these catchwords later.