Two Developments of the Concept of Anschauliche Theorie (Concrete Theory) in Germany and Japan

In the “method debate” (Methodenstreit) at the end of the 19th century, Gustav Schmoller, confronting Carl Menger, argued that there should be no hurrying of theoretical abstraction, but that priority should be given to extensive explanation and analysis of historical facts. But this standpoint of Schmoller, which included an extremely untheoretical tendency, aroused the dissatisfaction of some younger scholars who had grown up under the influence of the “historism” (Historismus). After Schmoller’s death (1917), the concept of “anschauliche Theorie” emerged in the 1920s as an attempt to overcome this perceived weakness.1 In the following, we explain the emergence of the concept, and then consider and compare two further branches of development in Germany and Japan in the years around 1940, taking the circumstances of the two countries at that time into account.