Keynes and Philosophy: Essays on the Origin of Keynes's Thought.

• Author: Lawlor, Michael S.

Anyone with an interest in the history of economic ideas, or more narrowly in the ideas of John Maynard Keynes, has by now noticed the explosion of literature in recent years preoccupied with Keynes's philosophical views. The aim and motivation of this scholarship has been centered on the contention that understanding these philosophical aspects of Keynes will both round out the distorted view of Keynes's thought emphasized by a strictly economistic viewpoint, and further our understanding of economics (his and ours). As I have commented at length on these two propositions in an earlier review in this journal [2], I have no wish to tackle them again. It is sufficient to note that the volume under review, which usefully collects together shorter essays from most of the major contenders in this literature, also falls into this tradition. In fact it seems to represent some more advanced stage of evolution for this literature in the evident diversity of opinions on Keynes's philosophical views themselves, and the sometimes conscious attempts to differentiate theories of Keynes's philosophy by the authors (as in the debate that rages across the footnotes appended to O'Donnell's and Carabelli's pieces in this volume).

Of the many selections I wish to treat three in particular, those by Bateman, Helburn and Davis, as space does not allow a fuller accounting here. But I first offer a brief indication of the issues involved in the others and how they connect to the general themes of the Keynes and Philosophy literature.

Yuichi Shionoya tackles the issue of continuity in Keynes philosophical outlook over his career, and the related problem of the extent to which his "My Early Beliefs" memoir constitutes a rejection, as of 1938, of some of his earlier positions. The importance of the 1938 essay, one commented on by almost all participants in this literature, is that by different interpretations it represents either the key to understanding how Keynes took G.E. Moore's idealistic ethical notions into the arena of economics and politics, or the rejection of Moore's "religion" altogether by the later Keynes. This issue is probably of little interest to those outside the Keynes and Philosophy literature proper, and, it must be said, the issue only grows in obscurity at Shionoya's hands. Rod O'Donnell offers an essay on the importance of Keynes's concept of "weight" as it bears on his views of rationality and uncertainty. The treatment is substantially the...