Germany, Japan and National Economics: An Alternative Paradigm of Modernity?

Scripture tells us that the truth will set us free. But we moderns hold that only freedom permits the discovery of that liberating truth. This search assumes the existence of an inexhaustible empirical terrain which awaits exploration. But there is another enabling assumption, one equally important but often denied, at work here: intellectual pluralism or the belief that there is more than one method of doing sound social science. The goal of this essay is to show, in a concise and reasoned way, why Friedrich List and the German Historical School stand at the heart of the contemporary defence of such pluralism, of this social scientific freedom to choose.