THE ENTREPRENEURIAL ESSENCE OF HUMAN ACTION

Abstract

One cannot understand anything about economics without first grasping the concept and implications of the entrepreneurial function. If anything characterises the approach of this course and this chair —which is the focus of the Austrian School of Economics— is its dynamic perspective on processes of social cooperation, grounded in the creative and coordinating nature of the acting human being. What is an entrepreneur? This concept is very important because, in everyday language, we tend to reduce it to a businessman or a business owner. But today we shall see that, in this lecture, the term ‘entrepreneur’ has a much broader and more general meaning because every human being, by the very fact of being human, always acts ‘entrepreneurially’. We shall therefore devote today’s session to studying the entrepreneurial nature of human beings.