Methodological Principles and an Epistemological Introduction

This epistemological introduction elucidates the methodological principles of mainstream economics, including new classical macroeconomics, as a special way of seeing the world. Its chosen and declared theoretical ground is the Crisis by Edmund Husserl. Starting from here, it is examined whether mainstream economics appearing as a pure theory can be considered as relevant to the real (economic) world (or, using Husserl’s term life-world). It is argued that the relationship of mainstream economics and reality as such has drawn a special trajectory. Neoclassical theory separated their Weberian ideal-typical models and reality, while the positivist program of Friedman did not even raise this issue. In the end, new classical macroeconomics completely merged these two spheres into each other. It is problematic that while new classical macroeconomics intended to give a realistic and comprehensive picture of the real world, it maintains the strategy of neoclassical theory that has built itself as a pure theory. Above this line of enquiry, considerable amount of attention is paid to the common methodological roots of mainstream economics and Newtonian physics, in the course of which Platonism gets identified as the intellectual foundation that governed modern natural sciences as well as economics.