My reply to Peter is that, yes, it is true, and Hayek says, that,
"There is no single man to whom I owe more intellectually", and it is
also true, at the same time, that, that once we get past the fact that
Hayeked owed his problems to their casting by Mises, and their inadequete
treatment by Mises, what we find is that Hayek is more clearly influenced
in the _answers_ he provided by Menger, Wieser, and Wicksell, than he
is by Mises -- and in fact, although Mises gave Hayek the problems in a
form that gave Hayek a task to complete, these problems are found earlier
in less pointed versions in the workds of Menger, Wieser, Bohm-Bawerk,
and Wicksell (i.e. the knowledge problem, and the problem of making sense
of the role of equilibrium constructions in monetary theory and trade
cycle theory, and the problem of socialist calculation -- all problems
already found in Menger, Wieser, Bohm-Bawerk, and Wicksell). Mises cast
problems from Menger,Wieser, Bohm-Bawerk, and Wicksell in a form that
gave Hayek work to do, solution to find that were not adequately provided
by Mises, just as they were not adequately provided by Menger, Wieser,
Bohm-Bawerk, and Wicksell. But Hayek's solution came out of the work of
Menger, Wieser, and Wicksell, much more that it did Mises, or Mises teacher
Bohm-Bawerk. At least that is my judgment -- again I think there are no
cut and dried 'right answers' here. Peter could easily provide a more
detailed demostration which changes my mind. But even Hayek's remarks when
delivering a lecutre in honor of Ludwig von Mises do not seem decisive in
establishing the issue one way or the other. There is too much evidence
on the other side, as far as I can tell looking at all of the material that
I am familiar with.
["There is not single man ...." -- Hayek is talking of Mises, sorry I
didn't make that clear in the above.]
Greg Ransom
Dept. of Philosophy
UC-Riverside
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