‘Seht ihn nur an—Niemandem war er Untertan’ says Gottfried Haberler in his obituary to Schumpeter, quoting Nietzsche. ‘Just look at him. He was inferior to no one’ (Haberler 1950: 344). Schumpeter certainly deserves his reputation as a truly powerful independent and original égure in economics. Yet, as I shall argue in this paper, when seen in the context of pre-World War II and of German economics, Schumpeter's economic thinking was less original than we perceive it to be today. One part of Schumpeter was deeply rooted in a knowledge-and production-based academic tradition that today is only supported by a minority of economists; it is what I call the ‘Other Canon’ of economics. However, the tension between this economic tradition and Schumpeter's admiration for the logic, accuracy and elegance of the emerging mathematics-based economics was an important factor in producing the many paradoxes and contradictions of the man.

Both to his contemporaries at Harvard and in the context of the history of economic thought as studied today, Schumpeter's towering égure is perceived as being unique among 20th-century economists on three counts: the originality of his thought; his perceived independence of the 20th-century political axis from left to right; and the perceived contradictions and paradoxes of his teachings.

My contention is that these three phenomena are closely interrelated, and can be better understood in their entirety by studying the philosophical and historical roots of non-Anglo-Saxon economic thinking. Both Schumpeter's originality and his political independence from the standard 20th-century political axis from right to left are, to an important degree, explained by examining the Other Canon economic tradition in which Schumpeter, the Austrian, had his intellectual roots. I argue that Schumpeter's academic schizophrenia was caused by his attempt at unifying two fundamentally incompatible world-views, as they are contrasted in this paper.

Schumpeter wished to be original, and wanted to be perceived as being independent of environmental inèuences. Haberler comments on his ‘absolute refusal to be swayed by current fashions in science and politics’ and his ‘almost perverse pleasure in being unpopular and standing alone’ (Haberler 1950: 344). This solitary intellectual life of Schumpeter — paradoxically as usual — was combined with an unusual capacity to understand other people's views, a skill which is apparent both in his biographical essays and in the History of Economic Analysis.