"The most important rule of theatre [says an old theatre adage] is that the king is never played by the actor playing the king, but by all the other actors around him.'...
    "The greatest playwrights know everything about human nature not because they have some mystical, clairvoyant insight into you or me, but due to the structural constraints of their format: in order for tragedies to work — for problems, decisions, and plot twists to be accepted by the audience as true — the writers must learn to tweak the interactions between the characters until those seem logical and believable to all. Accessing good theatre gives you a significant cheat code for accessing human thinking and behaviour. Read Sophocles, watch Laurence Olivier’s Shakespeare adaptations, see Molière or Chekhov on stage, enter a book club debate about Brecht, David Mamet or Yasmina Reza, and you will experience many 'Aha!' moments that will be assets in your subsequent life. 

    "You will also, of course, feel aesthetic pleasure and what Aristotle calls catharsis* ... which is why most people engage with plays in the first place. The great knowledge that you will be gifted is just the bonus."

~ Anna Gát from her post 'Tyranny as Tragedy'

* Increasingly, the interpretation of catharsis as "intellectual clarification" rather than the more commonly held "emotional purgation" has gained recognition in describing the effect of catharsis. "Without doubt 'katharsis' [in the original Greek spelling] is the most celebrated concept in the entire field of literary criticism" says Leon Golden, yet Aristotle, The Poetics, his work on aesthetics, "provided neither a definition nor a commentary for this key term". "That katharsis is meant to represent some form of moral [or emotional] purification has been held [widely] ... [but] there is not a single word in The Poetics itself to justify it." He argues that what Aristotle meant by the word is "the intellectual pleasure of learning" — and so "'katharsis' in The Poetics should not be translated as 'purgation' or 'purification' but, rather, as 'intellectual clarification'."

Related: Hans-Hermann Hoppe, “Javier Milei” (PFS 2024)

Resignation from the Scientific Advisory Board of the Ludwig von Mises Institute Germany

On 13 July 2025, Prof. Dr. Rolf W. Puster, Prof. Dr. Jörg Guido Hülsmann and Prof. Dr. Hans-Hermann Hoppe declared their resignation from the Scientific Advisory Board of the Ludwig von Mises Institute Germany. Only two of the original five members remain on that Board.

Below, Puster, Hülsmann and Hoppe explain the reasons for their resignation.

At the beginning of July, the board of the Ludwig von Mises Institute Germany (hereinafter MIG) announced on the Institute’s website that a ‘Memorial Prize in honour of Ludwig von Mises’ would be created in October of this year and awarded to Argentine President Javier Milei. Neither the creation of the prize (which, incidentally, is the only prize ever awarded by MIG) nor the selection of the laureate were discussed in advance with the Institute’s Scientific Advisory Board. Not only is this bad style, it also gives the public the impression that these decisions have the backing of the Board. This is not the case.

Javier Milei has demonstrated that it is possible to win electoral majorities for radical libertarian policies in economically advanced countries. This is undoubtedly a significant achievement. After his election, he immediately set about dismantling the state and, in many respects, he has pursued this policy more resolutely, more extensively and more successfully than any of his Argentine predecessors.

Nevertheless, we consider the awarding of this prize to him to be unjustified. In our view, a ‘Memorial Prize in honour of Ludwig von Mises’ could be awarded to scientists or politicians who have rendered outstanding services to the development, dissemination or application of Mises’ ideas. It is obvious that Javier Milei is not a scientist, but a politician. It is true that he has made the names of Ludwig von Mises, Murray Rothbard and other thinkers of the Austrian School known to a wider public. But his knowledge of their ideas and theories is superficial and flawed, and his praise is therefore double-edged. In any case, we can only advise the public not to regard Milei’s statements on economic philosophy as authoritative.

Javier Milei could therefore be honoured on the basis of his political activities. However, in this case, his work must be measured in terms of long-term practical achievements. It is not enough that he pursue liberal goals with his policies. Rather, the political means must be objectively suitable for actually achieving those goals. This should be self-evident, but it is often disregarded in politics, as Ludwig von Mises repeatedly pointed out. Milei’s policies are a case in point.

For one thing, Milei is at the beginning of his political career. The future success of his policies to date is highly questionable, and he may still take many wrong turns in the course of his term in office. No one knows how freedom-oriented they will ultimately prove to be. The assessment of his actions must be differentiated and open-ended. This simply cannot be done after twenty months in office.

On the other hand, whatever successes his policies may have had so far have been largely achieved through the usual means of inflationary government financing, i.e. by inflating the money supply and government debt. It remains to be seen whether this strategy will succeed under Milei, given that it has repeatedly and for good reasons failed in Argentina and other countries in the past.

In addition, all the achievements of his political record to date are already offset by major liabilities: the political centralisation of the country, the expansion of the police state, the failure to implement the announced abolition of the central bank (one of the most popular points in his election programme), the haggling with the country’s traditional political elites, who also dominate his cabinet, and a foreign policy that is not geared towards international peace and is therefore not a libertarian policy.

Today, Javier Milei stands not only for inflation-financed radical economic policies with an uncertain outcome. He also stands for uncritical and downright enthusiastic solidarity with the current governments of the United States and Israel.

In our opinion, awarding Javier Milei a ‘Memorial Prize in Honour of Ludwig von Mises’ therefore has the potential to cause lasting and irreparable damage to the Ludwig von Mises Institute Germany, as well as to the Austrian School as a whole.

We cannot and will not take responsibility for this. We therefore declare our resignation from the Scientific Advisory Board of the Ludwig von Mises Institute Germany.

13 July 2025
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