ABSTRACT
But however much Herrmann feels himself indebted to Roscher, his innermost intentions seem in the end to diverge from those of his master. For Herrmann, what is at issue is not so much the application to economic phenomena of a historical method, as the discovery and the making precise of the guiding principles of economics itself, as a discipline in the process of realising its autonomy. In his Allgemeine Wirtschaftslehre-a general theory of economics ‘systematically set forth via easily understood sketches’—published in Graz in 1868, Herrmann presents the basic principles of this self-autonomising process. The theory of economics should free itself from all limitations which ensue (or would threaten to ensue) from its association with or dependence on other disciplines. Above all the conception of economics as a branch of political science should be abandoned, as, equally, should any conception of economics as a part or appendage of sociology. Economic theory should also cease to be confused with technological disciplines of any kind. For this theory was indeed still, in the middle of the nineteenth century, characterised by the fact that it conceived and understood itself either as political science or as social theory. Clearly, however, if this principle is to be put into effect, then a criterion of independence has first of all to be set out; only then can the question be decided as to the precise nature of the economic science which would thereby result. Thus, for example, there is no way in which economics should conceive itself as relating to a unified field of objects after the fashion of the sciences of, say, mineralogy or zoology, since the field of economic action in regard to both its objects and its modes of appearance, lacks any determinate boundaries.
