ABSTRACT
The Austrian branch – actually it is more like the root and trunk – of methodological individualism culminates in the writings of Friedrich August von Hayek. His particular version of it is a development of the ideas of Max Weber, Alfred Schutz and of his teacher Ludwig von Mises, but it owes, perhaps, even more to the original version of Carl Menger. With Hayek, the circle of Austrian methodological individualism comes to a close.30 It is a form of methodological individualism, which is less radical than that of the theory of the social contract and also of mainstream neoclassical economics. Austrian methodological individualism is based on the premise that humans are social and cultural beings (cf. Madison, 1990: and Lange-von Kulessa, 1997).
