Luigi Einaudi: dai Miti e paradossi alle Ipotesi astratte discutendo con Fasiani

The publication of Fasiani’s Principii di Scienza delle finanze in 1941, originated an important epistemological debate between Einaudi and Fasiani. In fact, Einaudi wrote a review article in his own Rivista di Storia economica, in which he raised some important criticisms. Einaudi’s main criticisms are two: he first one is that in Fasiani’s Principii no value judgments are considered, leading the scholar to an inhuman detachment from his object of study. The second criticism is that public finance is not a matter that could have a plot or unifying doctrine logically deduced from a principle. In this way, one can not write a treatise on the subject, and it makes no sense to write “Principles” of a science which is rebel to unitary and independent accommodation. The Principii of Fasiani, in fact, is not a treaty, but three separate monographs. To these criticisms, Fasiani responded by a letter accompanied by a typescript, to which Einaudi replied by a letter accompanied by a typescript. Fasiani resumed the exchange of ideas with a second letter and a second typescript. The discussion continued by other letters, and with four more Einaudi’s articles and two articles by Fasiani. All the correspondence between Einaudi and Fasiani, which occurred in 1942 and 1943, now preserved in the Einaudi Foundation of Turin, is published in the Appendix.