The Cambridge Companion to Keynes, ed. Roger Backhouse and Bradley Bateman

摘要

This book adds to a list of 64 other "Companion" volumes published by the Cambridge University Press on topics ranging from individual authors of great philosophical import - like Aristotle - to generally recognized important themes in philosophy - like German Idealism. As such it is relatively rare that an economist or economic themes makes this notable list. I count four other entries on this list which are devoted to prominent economic authors or economic themes - Marx, Mill, Rawls, The Scottish Enlightenment and Smith. Thus, is seems worth asking what special aspects of Keynes's work qualifies him for this exalted philosophical company. It would appear from the entries in this volume that the issue of probability (the usual philosophical suspect in the case of Keynes) as well as political philosophy, economic methodology, ethics, the art of an ethical life, modernism and the philosophy of economic policy advice all qualify Keynes as the object of continuing fascination, not to just to economists, but to a whole range of researchers in different fields of study. In what follows, I will try to group the entries in this volume into subsets that vary by how they might particularly appeal to different audiences. But let me say at the start that such a broad attention by the editors of this volume is a wise and useful one in the case of Keynes, the study of whose life and works has grown into the object of innumerable specialist literatures. The existence of so much writing on Keynes also justifies the choice of the Cambridge University Press in including a "companion" to Keynes in the topics treated by its list.