Eucken's Grundlagen book focused on method and sought to produce a new synthesis of the "great antinomy" of historical and theoretical economics in Germany. Eucken developed pointed abstractions from which he derived ideal types that would help him develop a general theory of economic order, to "recognize the system of order and thus the structure of the economic order of each epoch and every people (Volk)." He believed his method would yield "useful tools" needed to describe the "concrete every day life . . . of every concrete economic order" (Eucken 1940/1943, 254f.; emphasis added).

Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, loc. 532