Carl Menger: The Founder of the Austrian School, by
Joseph T. Salerno,
Mises.org, 16 Aug 2000
Biographical and bibliographical essay, discussing Menger's life and work and delving into various aspects of Austrian economic theory as presented by him
Menger recognized that at the center ... of economic theory in general is human action-and human action alone. As [he] epigrammatically put it in preliminary notes ...: "Man himself is the beginning and the end of every economy" and "Our science is the theory of a human being's ability to deal with his wants." While the centrality of human want satisfaction had been affirmed by earlier writers in the subjective-value tradition, Menger alone was successful in forging a method of economic theorizing—it was later to be dubbed "praxeology" by Ludwig von Mises—that was consistent with this insight.
On Autobiography, by
Walter Block,
LewRockwell.com, 4 Dec 2002
Autobiographical, recounts how Block met Ayn Rand and later Murray Rothbard and how he progressed from libertarian minarchism to anarcho-capitalism; reprinted in Block's
I Chose Liberty (2010), chapter 9
[W]ith regard to praxeology, this was not at all the case. For one thing, my philosophical training, such as it was, was centered on logical positivism. The idea that truth could be attained in the absence of empirical evidence, seemingly in the face of empirical evidence, was anathema to me. For another, I had had an intellectual investment of several years duration, now, in mainstream economics ... To embrace Austrianism would be to reject all that I had learned in the past half-decade and more. Further, there were praxeologists who were not anarcho-capitalists.
