ABSTRACT
So far the focus of this part of the book has been on projects or contributions which have reacted to explanatory failure in economics in ways that do not challenge the philosophical perspective which underpins and informs the dominant or mainstream approach. What, though, of those economists who have responded by attempting to provide an alternative approach through challenging explicitly the philosophical presuppositions of the orthodox project? Of particular significance and interest here are those who have distanced themselves from the mainstream approach but without accepting an alternative along the lines of that systematised so far as transcendental realism. Specifically, what are we to make of subjectivism, an increasingly influential anti-naturalist stream of thought in economics? Hayek is the most significant figure here, the subjectivist who has had the most sustained impact. More than fifty years ago Hayek rejected the path of orthodoxy and set about attempting to elaborate an approach of greater relevance. He criticised in particular the reliance of mainstream economists upon positivist methods and procedures borrowed, as he saw it, from the natural sciences, methods which he assessed as contributing 'scarcely anything to our understanding of social phenomena' (1942-4: 21). And he spent many years attempting to charter a more viable, specifically social scientific alternative project. With apparently increasing numbers of economists reacting to the failure of the modern discipline by turning to the subjectivist tradition in general, and to Hayek's non-scientistic alternative in particular, it is on the latter that I want to focus here.
