Theory of Freedom Research Project
The Theory of Freedom Research Project in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Hamburg grew out of discussions starting around 2009 on the different approaches to the study of Ludwig von Mises's Nationalökonomie (1940), published in English as Human Action (1949).
It is an informal research group with no official membership composed both of department members and independent adjunct scholars . The centre of gravity has constituted around
Predominant among the approach to the study of the various facets of freedom is not a focus on the consequences of Mises's views in economic theory of political economy. Instead, it has been a characteristic feature of the project's approach to discuss the issue of human action and the fundamental constitution of the economising individual from a variety of angles, including the perspectives of action theory, semantics, ontology, the philosophy of logic, the philosophy of mind, early modern political philosophy, the ancient theory of animal activity, contemporary moral philosophy and metaethics as well as the Pyrrhonism of late antiquity.
Thus, the research carried out in this project contributes to the intersection of philosophy and the social sciences, among them most notably economics, in quite a peculiar way.