Phenomenology and economics

The question of relevance of phenomenological method for economics has been revived in recent decades especially in the context of the Austrian school and also in more general considerations of economics (see Düppe 2011). My thesis concentrates mainly on the important contributions of formerly Viennese social thinker Alfred Schutz. I attempted to find an interpretation of the original Schutzian legacy that would fit present methodological discussions and show the virtues of the Schutzian framework in comparison with Misesian aprioristic praxeology on one extreme and the empirical ventures of behavioral economists on the other. Chapter 1 (World and science by Ludwig von Mises) shows that Misesian theoretical approach can, on one hand, provide a good tool to defend a specific character of social sciences that rely on folk psychological (or ‘mentalist’) concepts (finality, means-ends relationship) from purely pragmatic (i.e., not metaphysical) grounds. Th