The German historical school of economics (GHSE) was one of only a few original economic phenomena to have left a profound and indelible trace in economic science. Basing themselves on the school’s special methodology and its perspective on economic processes, adherents of the GHSE formulated many ideas and approaches that were important for their time. In this way, the GHSE issued a challenge to the then - dominant British classical political economy, with its abstract and speculative constructs and exaggeration of the role of a deductive as opposed to an inductive method of analysis. In the concepts of the GHSE, a special role was played by non - material factors of production, and by the fact that the subject was rooted in the system of the national economy. Such phenomena as morality, law, culture in the broad sense of the word, the spiritual principles (Geist) of economic activity, and similar aspects of economic activity that, it seemed, were not clearly defined or understood were ignored by classical political economy and left outside the bounds of the dominant principles of politico - economic analysis. Meanwhile, it was precisely these that made up the core of the concept, developed by the German economists, of the national historical human being, of the motives behind his or her interaction with those round about, and of the principles shaping the national economy. In our own time, many of the ideas of the GHSE have been taken up by the neoinstitutionalists and by economists operating outside the framework of the neoclassical mainstream.