“Almost persuaded”: karl mittermaier on dogmatism, pragmatism, and the RAA

This paper explores the philosophical and methodological contributions of Karl Mittermaier, situating his work within the tradition of pragmatic liberalism and connecting it to James Buchanan’s and Frank Knight’s concept of “relatively absolute absolutes” (RAAs). Mittermaier’s lifelong intellectual project was defined by a refusal to embrace any dogmatic economic “school” and by a distinctive pragmatism that acknowledged both the indispensability of market processes and the necessity of institutional preconditions for their proper functioning. Drawing on his engagement with Ludwig Lachmann, Adam Smith, and the Austrian and ordoliberal traditions, Mittermaier argued that markets require an intentionally constructed framework of rules—a “visible hand” behind the “invisible hand.” Yet this coordinating authority must refrain from directing outcomes, lest it undermine the spontaneous order it seeks to sustain. By comparing Mittermaier’s pragmatism to Buchanan’s RAAs, the paper shows how both frameworks navigate between absolutism and relativism in moral, political, and scientific reasoning. Both positions reject constructivist rationalism and moral foundationalism, instead grounding inquiry in historically tested conventions that remain perpetually open to revision. Mittermaier’s “almost persuaded” stance—his reluctance to commit fully either to laissez-faire or to dirigisme—embodies a meta-methodological humility that parallels Buchanan’s conception of public choice as a science of “government failure” and Knight’s skepticism of moral certainty. The result is a portrait of Mittermaier as an underappreciated theorist of economic coordination and a bridge between the epistemic modesty of the Scottish Enlightenment and the constitutional pragmatism of modern public choice economics.

Duke Scholars

Author Michael C. Munger Political Science