Spontaneity as a Concept of General Significance: The Austrian School on Money and Economic Order

The contribution of the Austrian School of economics to the philosophy of money is the same as the Austrian contribution to general philosophy. The Austrians are famous for their elucidation and defense of the spontaneous-order tradition in economics. Building primarily on the work of David Hume, Adam Smith, and other philosophers of the Scottish Enlightenment, Austrian economists such as Carl Menger, Ludwig von Mises, and F. A. Hayek have done more than any other school of modern economic thought to draw out the implications for economic methodology, theory, and policy of the spontaneous nature of many economic, especially monetary, phenomena. I show how both Scottish philosophers and Austrian economists have used spontaneity to explain money and money to illustrate spontaneity. I conclude that the general significance of spontaneity has still not been fully appreciated and that this represents an opportunity for Austrian economists to further develop and apply their analysis of spontaneity.