Roy:  There is a history of how we came to be a profession that 
thinks the  competent practice of economics is quite independent of 
knowledge of HET - unlike, eg, the practice of human studies.  This 
methodological norm, in other words, has a history.  I agree with 
Hegel that justifying a norm, showing that it is rational, is a 
matter of giving a convincing historical account of how it came to be 
held, an account that makes its adoption a  solution 
to  inconsistencies that  a prior set of norms for economic practice 
runs into. So the current practice doesn't get justified - if it does 
- essentialistically, as you say; but neither does it get justified 
pragmatically, on Hegel's account. It gets justified, if it does get 
justified," dialectically," where this term means nothing more than 
what I've said above!

J. Kevin Quinn