Menger's Valuation of Nature: An Atomistic and “Organistic” Approach

Abstract

This essay focuses on Carl Menger's valuation of nature. Menger's stand in the discussion on method with Schmoller might easily give rise to the idea that he was a thinker who was fully oriented towards an atomistic interpretation of society and to an axiomatic way of thought, and that his economic approach to nature was characterised only by this way of thinking. Examination of Menger's work, however, proves that the author's economic philosophy also shows clear features of a holistic way of thinking, oriented on German Romanticism.