Abstract

The Economist and Reality

History of economic analysis shows that economists have had very different conceptions of economic reality. Soon their scope of view widened, soon it narrowed. Formalizing of economic thinking in the postwar years led to a considerable narrowing. The purpose of economy was restricted to the task of producing quantities of goods. This again led to a nihilistic dehumanization of economic thinking. An amplification and stabilization of the picture of economic reality seems necessary. Attempts of this kind played an important role in the decades before the Second World War in Germany but have been forgotten since then. In their endeavours to overcome the historical school of economics, von Gottl and Weippert developed the idea of a time independent economic ontology, Spiethoff developed the idea of a historical theory. The problems of a historical theory have gained actuality by the new problems .of development countries. It seems necessary to connect both broken threads of ideas to promote a solution of the unsatisfactory present