The Austrian school of economics has its roots in several European intellectual traditions. Among these major influences, the tradition of classical French liberalism occupies a prominent place, from the physiocrats to Frédéric Bastiat in the 19th century. This tradition passed on to Austrian thinkers the importance of individual action, private property, entrepreneurship and a rigorous critique of state interventionism.

Richard Cantillon, considered by Schumpeter, Hayek and Rothbard to be the father of modern economics, is a key figure in this legacy. His Essai sur la nature du commerce en général (1755) placed the entrepreneur at the heart of economic analysis, emphasizing the uncertainty inherent in the market. This vision directly prefigures the work of Ludwig von Mises and Israel Kirzner on the entrepreneurial function. His understanding of the price system, combining scarcity of goods and subjective preferences, made him a precursor of the marginalist revolution.

Witnessing the catastrophe of John Law's paper money system, Cantillon developed an innovative monetary theory. He defended sound currencies such as gold and silver, having understood that arbitrary increases in the money supply lead to inflationary bubbles. He was also one of the first to theorize that the interest rate depends on the supply and demand of money, foreshadowing the Austrian theory of capital.

Jean-Baptiste Say introduced essential notions that were to have a profound influence on Austrian thought. His famous law of markets asserts that every supply creates its own demand. For Say, money is merely an instrument of circulation, not a source of wealth. This concept resonates with the Austrian vision of money as an intermediary in exchanges. Say also emphasized the entrepreneur as the principal agent of production and innovation, addressing the notion of uncertainty and the entrepreneur's unique ability to anticipate future demand.

Frédéric Bastiat is the most famous French liberal economist of the 19th century. He criticized the unintended consequences of state intervention, a criticism that resonates with the work of Mises and Hayek on the failures of centralized planning. Bastiat understood the impossibility of the state collecting information dispersed throughout society. He believed that social harmony emerges naturally from a natural law comprising the right to exist, voluntary exchange and private property. This vision had a profound influence on Murray Rothbard. Bastiat was also one of the first to formulate an economic critique of interventionism and socialism, prefiguring arguments on the impossibility of economic calculation in a socialist regime.

The Austrian school also owes much to Scottish thinkers such as David Hume and Adam Smith for their contribution to political freedoms and the protection of natural rights. These thinkers shared the conviction that individuals can, through appropriate institutions, pursue their personal interests in ways that benefit all. The famous metaphor of the invisible hand expresses this principle of the spontaneous emergence of a social order. As Stephen Horwitz explains, Menger and the Austrian economists provided a stronger explanation for Smith's intuitions by combining spontaneous order with marginalism and subjectivism.

Immanuel Kant's philosophy has provided an essential conceptual framework, particularly with regard to the a priori knowledge that underpins praxeology. Kant distinguishes a priori knowledge, independent of experience, from a posteriori knowledge, derived from empirical observations. He also differentiates between the phenomenon, what the individual perceives, and the noumenon, the inaccessible thing-in-itself. Hans-Hermann Hoppe has underlined the importance of this philosophy: Kant developed the idea that our propositions can be classified according to two criteria (analytical or synthetic, a priori or a posteriori). The hallmark of Kantian philosophy is the assertion that a priori true synthetic propositions exist, and it is precisely because Mises subscribes to this thesis that he can be called a Kantian. The axiom of human action belongs to this category of propositions whose truth value can be established without recourse to empirical observation.