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Interview with Hans-Hermann Hoppe, an Anti-Intellectual Intellectual (Syahdan, 2008)

by Stephan Kinsella on January 7, 2026

From HansHoppe.com:

Interview with Hans-Hermann Hoppe, an Anti-Intellectual Intellectual (Syahdan, 2008)

by Stephan Kinsella on January 7, 2026

“Interview with Hans-Hermann Hoppe, an Anti-Intellectual Intellectual” (pdf), English translation of Hans-Hermann Hoppe: Potret Intelektual Anti-Intelektual (local version), interview (in Indonesian) by Sukasah Syahdan in Akal dan Kehendak (“Reason and Will,” an online weekly Journal on Liberty, Indonesia), Apr. 28, 2008. The English translation is below.

For other biographical material, see Hoppe Biography.

Interview with Hans-Hermann Hoppe, an Anti-Intellectual Intellectual

Sukasah Syahdan*

As is sometimes the case even today, Hans-Hermann Hoppe as a young man was also a left-winger. Yet a reading of Böhm-Bawerk’s critiques of Marxism quickly planted a first seed of disbelief in the system, making him aware of the illusion overwhelming the Zeitgeist. For some time, he became a mild Popperian and social democrat. This precursored his determination to examine further the economic science and sociology.

By this time young Hoppe seemed to have arrived at a crucial conclusion: on the existence of sciences whose theorems are ‘empirically’ irrefutable or non-falsifiable, even in social realms. His exploration led him to believe that economic laws are a priori, traceable by use of deductive syllogism. However, it was his exposure to the thoughts of Ludwig von Mises, the eminent scholar of the tradition that later bears his very name, that he came to understand his place amidst the sometimes hostile competing thoughts. He learned that he, a native German, was in fact an “Austrian.”

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“Because the concept of property, for instance, is so basic that everyone seems to have some immediate understanding of it, most people never think about it carefully and can, as a consequence, produce at best a very vague definition. But starting from imprecisely stated or assumed definitions and building a complex network of thought upon them can lead only to intellectual disaster. For the original imprecisions and loopholes will then pervade and distort everything derived from them. To avoid this, the concept of property must first be clarified.” —Hans-Hermann Hoppe, TSC, ch. 2

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