Luigi Einaudi e Mauro Fasiani: il dibattito epistemologico dal 1941 al 1943 (The debate between Luigi Einaudi and Mauro Fasiani (1941-1943))

The paper draws attention to the 1942-1943 debate between Luigi Einaudi and his pupil Mauro Fasiani, and is discussed by considering not only the essays published in journals, but also the private letters of the two discussants. It mainly relates to the different perspectives by which science may be considered and the relationship among science, value judgments, and economic policies. The debate began when Fasiani published his treatise Principii di Scienza delle Finanze in 1941. In a short time, Einaudi published a review article in his own «Rivista di storia economica» basically praising, but also raising the important criticisms that value judgments cannot be excluded from fiscal theory and that the science of finance is not a matter that can have a unifying doctrine logically deduced from a principle, meaning that scholars could not write treatises on such a subject: the Principii is not a treaty, but three separate monographies. To these criticisms, Fasiani responded by a letter accompanied by a typescript, to which Einaudi replied by a letter and a typescript. Fasiani resumed the exchange of ideas with a second letter and a second typescript. The discussion continued by other letters, and with four more Einaudi’s articles and two articles by Fasiani. All the correspondence between Einaudi and Fasiani, which occurred in 1942 and 1943, now preserved in the Einaudi Foundation of Turin, is published in the Appendix.