Why an Axiom Is No Longer an Axiom

Modern Austrian School scholarship—“scholarship” rather than “economics,” because its scope is far too broad to be called merely economics—begins from the shoulders of the giant Ludwig von Mises. And what opens the vast body of Austrian School scholarship is Mises’s Human Action Axiom. Put simply, the axiom of human action is the absolute claim that human beings are acting beings and that their actions “necessarily” have purposiveness. In fact, for any proposition to qualify as an “axiom,” it must be true in itself even without supporting grounds. But is the axiom of human action really true in and of itself? In other words, do all human actions inherently have purposiveness? It is something everyone already knows, even without invoking philosophical grounds, that this proposition is not true, but in this Op-Ed I would like to offer more concrete reasons.

Human beings are acting beings. There is no disagreement on that point. But the proposition that human actions must necessarily have purposiveness is not true. Purpose is ultimately consciousness and reason. Yet, as we all know, we do not invest consciousness and reason into all of our actions. For example, when I concentrate, I have a habit of biting something. When I do this, my consciousness is not directed toward the object I am biting, but toward whatever I am concentrating on. My awareness is on actions such as reading a book or, as now, writing; only after some time passes do I realize that I have been biting something. This habit is merely one example. In our unconscious, we perform countless actions that arise from repetition. Of course, according to a Kantian way of thinking, one could conclude that actions arising from repetitive behavior are not free and therefore not moral. But setting aside any value judgment about habit itself, we would still have to acknowledge as fact both that habit exists and that it arises from repetitive action in the unconscious.

In the end, while it is true that human beings are acting beings, the proposition that actions must necessarily have purposiveness is not true. Hegel called this “second nature,” and even before Hegel, David Hume spoke of such a concept. If, as Mises says, human beings act and their actions necessarily have purposiveness, then human beings must by nature be beings who act freely. But if second nature can be governed through education, then while we may be able to govern conscious action, we cannot arbitrarily govern unconscious action arising from repetition. If so, second nature is extremely important, and actions that arise from repetition in the unconscious without any purposive awareness are also highly important forms of action. Then can human beings be free by necessity? Thinkers such as Kant and Mises placed great importance on reason, and that remains true, but much of our behavior is governed not by reason but by the unconscious. Just as the proposition in economics that market participants always act rationally is not true, so too the proposition that human beings act through reason and that action has purposiveness is also not true.

The Austrian School philosophy of explaining situations deductively from absolute truths is highly robust and tightly constructed, but this also means that if the axiom itself is overturned, the philosophy of the Austrian School also collapses. The philosophy and ideals of the Austrian School are highly valuable, but do human actions really possess only purposiveness? They do not.

Original title: 공리가 더 이상 공리가 아닌 이유

Author: Nam-ung Kim

Date: 2020-02-05

Source: https://www.cfe.org/bbs/bbsDetail.php?cid=free_opinion&pn=16&idx=22355