Textual and Scientific Exegesis: George Stigler and Method in Economic Science

This chapter reconsiders Stigler’s 1965 distinction between textual and scientific exegesis, and explores its importance in the study and writing of the history of economic thought, as well as in the doing and writing of economic theory. After introducing the distinction, and its reception in Chicago and elsewhere, the chapter counters it (i) by laying out Pocock’s views on the reading of history as the identification and unscrambling of various language games that may conceivably be in play; and (ii) by elaborating Stigler’s own views of the role of mathematics in the theorizing of economic phenomena, as he exposed them in his 1949 LSE lectures. We read these texts through the lens provided by Carl Schmitt in his 1932 articulation of the friend/enemy dichotomy, and his characterization of the “enemy” as the defining character of the “political.” This chapter then reads Stigler as a Schmittian, and develops a critique of his views using his exegetical distinction as its particular point of departure, one that its authors hope will feed into questions concerning the teaching and curricular design of economic theory.