Since the revival of interest in J.M. Keynes's philosophical thinking with Skidelsky's (1983) introduction to Keynes's early unpublished papers, two studies of Keynes's philosophical thought in particular, one by Anna Carabelli (1988) and one by Rod O'Donnell (1989), have attracted attention from scholars. The Carabelli and O'Donnell books, however, are difficult to compare, since each locates Keynes's philosophy in a different Cambridge paradigm, O'Donnell in the early Cambridge paradigm of Moore, Russell, and the early Wittgenstein, and Carabelli in the later Cambridge paradigm of the later Wittgenstein. Readers of both books expecting to gain greater insight into Keynes's economics from his philosophical thinking may find this distressing should they wonder how to connect these arguments, since their interpretations of Keynes's philosophy are in so many respects opposed to one another (see Bateman, 1991a; Davis, 1995b).

One solution to this dilemma could be thought to rest in investigating how Keynes's philosophical thinking might have changed and developed over Keynes's lifetime. This is the argument adopted in the present work. Both Carabelli and O'Donnell recognize the existence of change in Keynes's philosophical thinking, but each regard it as minor and emphasize the continuity in Keynes's philosophy. Were one consequently to argue that there were significant areas of development in Keynes's philosophical thinking, then the Carabelli and O'Donnell books might well be seen to have focused on different stages of this thinking according to the emphasis they respectively place on Keynes's later and earlier periods of thinking.