Theoriegeschichte oder Theoriegeschichten?. Über den Status der ökonomischen Dogmengeschichte / History or Histories of Economic Thought?. On the State of the History of Economic Thought

There are two tendencies in the history of economic thought. One is the idea of unifying theory by reconstructing the older economic conceptions as forerunners of the modern core of economics. The other is the idea of plurality, which is not able to be reduced to theoretical homogenity. The first of these tendencies is dominant, the second one is becoming more and more discussed. But there are good reasons for looking on the unifying tendency as only one story beneath other possible one's. Unifying history of economic thought is not exclusive. Contrarily, the idea of pluralism in the history of economic thought may be well defined, but has to be completed by an epistemological conception of the relevance of contextes. Different theories in different times are embedded in different contextes, most of them not economic one's. Theoreticans in the history of economic thought are not absolutely free in choosing their contextes, but they are also not free in ignoring them. Beyond the unifying idea of reconstructing older economic theories in the mode of modern theory, and beyond the classical hermeneutical approach, it seems better to do the job by reflecting contextspecifity of economic theories. This idea is even guilty for modern economic theory itself.