Menschenbild und Wirtschaftsordnung: Der Menschenbegriff im Kameralismus und in der National?konomie

This essay addresses the construction of human nature in cameralism and early German political economy. It suggests that the emergent economic sciences in Germany propounded a vision of human beings that stressed the psycho‐physiological roots of human behavior in general, and of economic activity in particular. In this vision, human beings possessed a body and soul whose constant interaction gave rise to needs and desires, and thus to the drive to behave as economic agents. Here the cameralists and early German political economists adopted conceptions of human nature current in the ‘Sciences of Man’ of the Enlightenment. This stress on the non‐rational, psycho‐physiological aspects of human nature prevented the theoretical construction of a stable human social life, and in this way justified the continued need for governmental oversight and control of economic activity.     

Zur Historisierung der Staatswissenschaften Von der Kameralistik zur historischen Schule der Nationalökonomie

At the beginning of the nineteenth century the mostly practically orientated and speculative patterns of economic theory of the eighteenth-century cameralists result with interrupted (but on the whole remarkable) traditional bands in the German Historical School of National Economy, which prevailed most of the German universities after 1870. This school of thought developed, although in the Germany of the beginning nineteenth century the cameralist encyclopedias and the reception of traditional theories of economic liberalism declined. The school of National Economy proved to be determined by traditional professional impacts (training of government officials), regional differences and specific regional changes of the English model, by the historical attitude of National Economy in relation to the arts sciences - this was however not a defined economic science concerning method and contents -, and by continuing the aims of a welfare state within late industrialized authoritarian governments.     

Kameralismus als paradoxe Konzeption der gleichzeitigen Stärkung von Markt und Staat. Komplexe Theorielagen im deutschen 18. Jahrhundert

Cameralism as the paradox concept of simultaneous strengthening of market and state. Complex theoretical constellations in Eighteenth Century's Germany. Cameralism is an early theory of political economy of the 17^th and 18^th century in Germany and Austria, defining markets as a mode of political order of the absolutistic state. Men are incomplete actors; the state has to arrange a secure life and well being. But all regulation and order is the basement for individual action and a certain kind of early liberty. To regulate men's actions is to protect them against any arbitrariness of the governor. In the shadow of strong regulation of the economy and the society we see the development of the liberal market society.