The Social Sciences and the A Priori

The paper makes a novel case to vindicate social sciences as substantially a priori, against the mainstream view that rejects apriorism as unscientific. After a brief review of the state of the art and the open options to defend a science that is a priori, we lay out a methodological dualism according to which human action is not accessible to the methods of empirical science but requires a normative stance to identify its subject matter as the expression of intentional action. Against this background, we then bring the apriorism of Mises, Rothbard, and Hoppe together with the normative turn in philosophy established by the Pittsburgh school of philosophy, resulting in normative apriorism as a firmly established scientific method that is specific to the social sciences. In brief, the strategy is to bring in normativity as a characteristic trait of human action in order to show why a science of human action has to be a priori in order to capture its subject.