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

STEPHEN D.PARSONSthe start, in the context of the setting of individual plans, we are leftwith a gulf between the methods of the historian and the socialscientist, between the individual actor and the institutions of society.Lachmann starts from the individual, in keeping with his desire tomaintain the Austrian emphasis on subjectivism, and then attemptsto incorporate institutions within an account that is conceived, fromthe start, individualistically.In his later work, Lachmann modifies his analysis to take accountof the context within which human action occurs:Most economic phenomena are observable, but ourobservations need an interpretation of their context if they areto make sense and add to our knowledge. Only meaningfulutterances of a mind lend themselves to interpretation.Furthermore, all human action takes place within a context of‘intersubjectivity’; our common everyday world (the Schutzian‘life-world’) in which the meanings we ascribe to our own actsand those of others are typically not in doubt and taken forgranted.(Lachmann 1990:138)However, if interpretations are ‘context dependent’, and yet thesecontexts are ‘taken for granted’, then they are not necessarilyaccessible to individual consciousness. Consequently, in situating‘meanings’ within a context which may simply be ‘taken forgranted’ by the author, and in engaging in acts of interpretationfrom within our own ‘taken for grantedness’, any act ofinterpretation necessarily transcends the self-understanding of theauthor. 14ConclusionLachmann s analysis of the relevance of ‘a Plan’ in understandinghuman action allows for a resolution of some of the problems facingMises’s account of human action. In his later work, Lachmannacknowledges that these plans are formulated within a ‘context ofintersubjective meanings’ (Lachmann 1990:139). If this is the case,then the institutional context within which plans are formulated isrelevant on two levels. First, it must be taken into account, even ifonly implicitly, by individual actors. Second, it must be taken intoaccount in interpreting human action.However, this argument raises a number of problems for56