František Čuhel

František Čuhel, also known as Franz Cuhel (Germanized version, as he lived in Czech lands during the Austro-Hungarian empire) is a Czech economist from the Austrian School of Economics (1862-1914).

The science of the last forty years may not simply be ignored. Today one may no longer be satisfied with a cursory consideration of Menger and Böhm-Bawerk; one must also be familiar with Pareto and have read Cuhel and Strigl, not to mention the most recent works in this field.

Ludwig von Mises [1]

He contributed to the Austrian value theory and the theory of ordinal preferences. He was the first to criticize the theory of cardinal utility and of interpersonal utility comparisons.

Rothbard even wrote about the “Cuhel-Mises theory of ordinal marginal utility”. Murray N. Rothbard, “Foreword to The Theory of Money and Credit by Mises”, 1981.

Yet the more radical was the second stage, which grew as a natural conclusion of the previous one. If values are subjective, then it follows that objective measurement is impossible. They cannot be subjected to a truly “scientific” analysis (as in natural sciences). This radical conclusion was put forth by the important Czech economist Franz Čuhel (1907). His insights could be portrayed as deconstructivist for most value theories, for they attacked any price theory which was grounded in utility or value measurements. Čuhel’s sweeping investigation was immediately accepted by Mises as fundamentally sound, despite the fact that value measurements were used by the Austrian School representatives (Mises 1981, p. 54). Although Menger did not use them, his framework did not preclude such possibility. Böhm-Bawerk used utility measurements frequently in his writings. He was even criticized by Čuhel himself and admitted that he only believed in soft measurability of sensations.

Mateusz Machaj, Mises and Value Theory

Works

• Zur Lehre von den Bedürfnissen: theoretische Untersuchungen über das Grenzgebiet der Ökonomik und der Psychologie, 1907

• K nauce o potřebách [ On the Theory of Needs ], 1907

• author of the “value” entry in the big Czech dictionary of 1897: “... Austrian theory, or theory of marginal value... which we consider as the most correct of all existing value theories...”

Articles about

• Jeffrey Tucker, “The Marginal Marginalist from Prague”
• Josef Šíma, “Les Tchèques et les idées autrichiennes”, in Histoire du libéralisme en Europe, ed. Philippe Nemo et Jean Petitot, PUF, Paris, 2006, p. 1270 .
• Jörg Guido Hülsmann, Mises: The Last Knight of Liberalism, 2007, pp. 218-219.
• Marek Hudík, “František Čuhel (1862-1914)” New Perspectives on Political Economy, Volume 3, Number 1, 2007, pp. 3-14.
• Wikibéral, Franz Cuhel
• Wikipedia CS, František Čuhel
• Wikisource CS, František Čuhel
• Databáze Národní knihovny ČR
• “100 Let od vydání Nauky o potřebách Františka Čuhla”, Terra Libera, October-November, 2017.
• https://www.google.ch/webhp?q=%22cuhel-mises%22#safe=off&q=%22cuhel-mises%22