The Concept of Human Action

We have asked, “What is entrepreneurship?” And we have equated it with the concept of human action and explained its etymological origin. But what is human action? Well, we already have an idea: to discover, seize, realize … But in scientific terms, we will define human action as “all deliberate behavior or conduct.” We need not repeat that it must be human behavior, carried out by a human being. That is to say, apes do not act entrepreneurially. Despite claims to the contrary, animals do not act. They do not act in the sense that we human beings act. We could certainly make an anthropomorphic interpretation of animal behavior as if animals acted. Almost everyone has had a dog. Dogs get so happy when they see us. They jump for joy … man’s best friend. They are practically our intimate companions. We talk to them; it seems like they answer. But there is an enormous, fundamental difference between animal behavior and human action. And it is that dogs are still doing what they were doing 50,000 or 100,000 years ago. In contrast, human beings have not ceased to entrepreneurially create new ideas. We have put a man on the moon. We have composed Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony and Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony. And we have advanced civilization in ways we could not have imagined a short time ago. Neither is the behavior of a sleepwalker human action. You all know what a sleepwalker does. He is sleeping. He suddenly gets up. He goes to the refrigerator. He pours himself a glass of milk. Still asleep, he goes out onto the balcony, climbs up onto the roof, goes into the neighbor’s house, does who knows what with the neighbor, climbs back out and into bed again, and still sound asleep and completely unaware. That is not human action. It is not deliberate conduct. He was asleep and the next day does not remember a thing. Reflex reactions are not human actions either. If someone taps us below the knee cap, like doctors do, with their little hammers, our leg goes up. That is not a human action either. Human action must be deliberate behavior or conduct. From an external viewpoint, human action does not require movement that could be observed by an outsider. Sometimes human action can consist of not doing something. I see someone about to fall from the deck of a listing ship, and right below where he is going to fall, there is a shark with a wide open mouth. So, I ask the guy who is about to fall, “By the way, do you have life insurance?” And he answers, “Yeah, why?” And I say, “Oh, no reason” and I keep on walking. He falls, and the shark eats him. I have plainly committed a human act of omission. This is important: Human actions are not unequivocally observable to an outsider. We will see how this precludes empirical verification in economics. Instead, human actions are only interpretable in subjective terms.