European Heritage in Economics and the Social Sciences

Nietzsche - Economy and Society: The Closed and the Open Questions a b J rgen G. Backhaus and Wolfgang Drechsler a University of Erfurt, Germany b Tallinn University of Technology, Estonia Nietzsche's impact and in?uence anywhere in and on our civilization was and is immense. This has by now been widely recognized in almost all areas, even in the "hard sciences" (see Babich 1999), but Nietzsche is still completely understudied in the ?eld of economics. This is all the more surprising because in?uence paths, both serious (e. g., Joseph A. Schumpeter) and pop ones (e. g., Ayn Rand), seem obvious, and because in some of his works, especially M- schliches, Allzumenschliches (1878-1886), a focus on economics is hard to miss. It would thus be only likely that he had some sort of signi?cant in?uence there; yet, one can ?nd hardly any references in the Nietzsche or economics 1 literature on what kind of in?uence that might have been or still is. To remedy this situation, the idea to plan an exploratory conference on Nietzsche and Economics arose. Because of the dif?cult and indeed unusual topic, we found it necessary to even start with a pre-conference, where the issues, questions, sources and possible approaches would be discussed. This pre-conference took place in Heilbronn, in the framework of the Heilbronn Symposia on Economics and the Social Sciences, in June 2000.