The Origins of the a Priori Method in Classical Political Economy: A Reinterpretation

The first third of the 19th century saw a quasi-rationalist method of investigation rise to dominance in English political economy. In the backward look that is the luxury of intellectual history, one can see that this style of deductivism was not the rationalism of Descartes. On the contrary, the Scottish Common Sense philosophy was appropriated and adapted by Jean Baptiste Say, James Mill, and John R. McCulloch. This method was given its formal expression in the work of Nassau Senior and Richard Whately. This quasi-rationalist method was developed independently of the French by Scottish philosophers as a response to Hume's fundamental challenge to the philosophy of empiricism. Society is familiar with the impoverished state of economic science. At least the Classical School was relatively direct with their preconceptions, thereby ensuring that the efforts of their critics could be more fruitful.