Mediating Creative Nature and Human Needs in Early German Political Economy

At its inception in the early nineteenth century, political economy in the German territories offered a new science that explored the dynamic interrelationship between human activity and natural processes. An emphasis on the complexity of human needs and the efforts to satisfy them furnished the emerging discipline with a solid anthropological foundation. Nevertheless, German political economists recognized the significant role played by nature in shaping and sustaining the human economy, a recognition that informed their approach to economic science.