The Identity of the Economic Agent — Seen From a Mengerian Point of View in a Philosophical and Historical context
Abstract
What is an ‘economic agent’? Who is ‘the’ economic agent? This question is one of the basic issues dealt with by the founder of the Austrian school of Economics, Carl Menger (1840-1921) even though the terminology of his times was different from ours : Menger did not coin the term “methodological individualism”, which his heir’s, Friedrich von Wieser, and would popularized by Josef Schumpeter. But he gave all the elements necessary to build it. In the era around 1900’s “self-realization and identity” were not discussed as today, so this paper, historically oriented, will aim at restoring the questioning upon the nature (das Wesen) and the identity of the economic agent in this era of the “Great Crossroads” of economic schools, and the way it was seen by the father of the methodology later known in economics as ‘Methodological individualism’ is here described against that background. Menger’s views on how individuals interact with one another and how social complexity spontaneously builds in are here at stake.