The Goldsmiths Institute of Management Studies is hosting two research seminars in March, details below. All are welcome and no registration is necessary.
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Was the School of Salamanca proto-Austrian?
Dr. Andy Denis, City, University of London.
1st March 2017 5.00 pm
In this paper I challenge Murray Rothbard’s interpretation of the School of Salamanca as proto-Austrian. I argue that Scholasticism is in goals and methods profoundly different from any modern school of economics, and that it is mistaken to use the Austrian school as a standard against which the Salamancans are to be appraised. Further, Rothbard’s interpretation is vitiated by a misconception of the specificity of the Austrian School: while the Salamancans bequeath a lasting heritage for 21st century economists, it is a broad contribution, one for many schools, and not at all one specific to the Austrian standpoint. Finally, the natural law tradition, which Rothbard correctly identifies as a continuity between early modern, classical and Austrian thought, far from an anticipation of scientific thinking in the Salamancans, constitutes a residue of religious thinking amongst at least some Austrians.
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