On the Choice of Method in Economics: Options for Humanists

This essay continues a dialogue concerning the problems that Christian personalism will face in efforts to work with the Chicago, Public Choice, and Austrian Schools of economics. These problems ought not be dismissed as recognizable only out of a theological concern, as they are addressed in lively debate within social science. The view of methodological individualism and the role of government held by these schools openly conflicts with Christian personalism. These schools represent the far right within economics as a science and show little inclination to improve their inadequate anthropological foundations. Better economic analysis of consumerism and a number of other (but by no means all) problems on the border between economics and ethics can be found among socalled heterodox schools of economic thought. Many of these employ foundational principles that are far more compatible with the perspective of Christian personalism.Daniel K. Finn, "On the Choice of Method in Economics: Options for Humanists," Journal of Markets & Morality 3, no. 2 (Fall 2000): 224-23