Subjectivism and Economic Analysis: Essays in memory of Ludwig ...

MISES AND LACHMANN ON HUMAN ACTIONWhenever one is in doubt about the meaning of a passage onetries to establish what the author ‘meant by it’, i.e. to whatideas he attempted to give expression when he wrote it…. It isevidently possible to extend this classical method ofscholarship to human acts other than writings.(Lachmann 1971:10)Lachmann’s explorations of the understanding of meaning thus beara strong psychological imprint—it is a matter of discovering whatlies in the mind of the other. However, as Gadamer notes,psychological understandings of the act of interpretation‘presuppose that only a mind on the same level can understandanother mind’ (Gadamer 1979:466). Lachmann’s account ofunderstanding meaning has unfortunate consequences for hisunderstanding of the relevance of plans.Lachmann wants to continue what he identifies as the Austriantradition’s emphasis on subjectivism. Consequently, according toLachmann, even given the same ‘objective’ situation, differentindividuals will respond differently because they regard thesituation with ‘different eyes’ (1971:11). In line with the possibilityof incorporating future intentions within his analysis, Lachmanngives this observation a temporal slant: any attempt to understandhuman action must take account of differences in perceptions of thefuture, and thus ‘to understand it (human action) we have tounderstand what image of the future the actors are bearing in theirminds’ (ibid.).However, in fleshing out this observation about the relevance ofimages in terms of plans, Lachmann also acknowledges that planscan only be formulated in the context of what he terms‘institutions’:Human action in society is interaction. Each plan must takeaccount of, among many other facts, favourable andunfavourable, the plans of other actors. But these cannot beknown to the planner. Institutions serve as orientation mapsconcerning future actions of the anonymous mass of actors.(Lachmann 1971:12–13)However, if institutions serve as ‘orientation maps’, then unless anyindividual is conscious, at the time of formulating plans, of thecomplete institutional context within which these plans areformulated, then the meaning of action cannot be deduced solely53