Final destination relativistic historicism?

pp. 35-41

in: Alexander Linsbichler, Was Ludwig von Mises a conventionalist?, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017

Abstract

Strictly universal laws are necessary in the theoretical social sciences including economics, but all attempts of Mises' contemporaries to justify them are unsustainable, according to Mises and proponents of historicism. Despite this agreement, Mises relation to historicist positions is judicial. Mises critically describes the limitations of the method of historical understanding (Verstehen). In spite of the obstacles presented in Chapter 2, he maintains that relativistic historism, which he ascribes to Weber, Rickert, Windelband, Collingwood, Dilthey, and Schmoller, and which in Mises' eyes represents a major threat to the discipline of economics and to human civilization, can be avoided by praxeology.