Book contents
- Frontmatter
- 1 A cunning purchase: the life and work of Maynard Keynes
- 2 The Keynesian revolution
- 3 Keynes and the birth of modern macroeconomics
- 4 Keynes as a Marshallian
- 5 Doctor Keynes: economic theory in a diagnostic science
- 6 Keynes and British economic policy
- 7 Keynes and Cambridge
- 8 Keynes and his correspondence
- 9 Keynes and philosophers
- 10 Keynes’s political philosophy
- 11 Keynes and probability
- 12 The art of an ethical life: Keynes and Bloomsbury
- 13 Keynes and ethics
- 14 Keynes between modernism and post-modernism
- 15 Keynes and Keynesianism
- Bibliography
- Index
10 - Keynes’s political philosophy
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 November 2006
- Frontmatter
- 1 A cunning purchase: the life and work of Maynard Keynes
- 2 The Keynesian revolution
- 3 Keynes and the birth of modern macroeconomics
- 4 Keynes as a Marshallian
- 5 Doctor Keynes: economic theory in a diagnostic science
- 6 Keynes and British economic policy
- 7 Keynes and Cambridge
- 8 Keynes and his correspondence
- 9 Keynes and philosophers
- 10 Keynes’s political philosophy
- 11 Keynes and probability
- 12 The art of an ethical life: Keynes and Bloomsbury
- 13 Keynes and ethics
- 14 Keynes between modernism and post-modernism
- 15 Keynes and Keynesianism
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
WHY DID KEYNES’S ‘POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY’ BECOME A BIG ISSUE?
One reason why Keynes's political philosophy has become a big issue is the realization that Keynes started out as a philosopher and regarded his Treatise on Probability, which was published in 1921, but mainly written before the First World War, as a work of philosophy rather than mathematics. This view was flattering to economists who liked to think of their subject as being an application of a broader political outlook, which in turn rested on some profound metaphysical view of the universe and man's place in it. But the evidence suggests to me that the evolution of Keynes's political and economic views was much more pragmatic and did not depend on such a philosophical edifice. The term 'political philosophy' has many different meanings; Keynes was a political philosopher only in the very broad sense of the term, synonymous with 'having a political outlook', much of it implicit.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge Companion to Keynes , pp. 180 - 198Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2006
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