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Keynes displayed an awesome array of talents, without being preeminent in any. He was not a genius in the sense of being a Divine Fool as was Mozart … - Robert Skidelsky
" "Keynes displayed an awesome array of talents, without being preeminent in any. He was not a genius in the sense of being a Divine Fool as was Mozart or Wittgenstein ― extraordinary at one thing, babyish in everything else. He was a wonderful all-rounder, with a superbly efficient thinking machine. At Eton he had excelled at mathematics and classics, and throughout his life he effortlessly bridged the two cultures. He was not a remarkable mathematician. Nor was he a great philosopher. As a historian he was an inspired amateur. He had a theory of politics, but it never saved him from the charge of being politically naive. Keynes was great in the combination of his gifts. His achievement was to align economics with changes taking place in ethics, in culture, in politics and in society ― in a word, with the twentieth-century spirit. But, like Jevons, his qualities never quite jelled. That, rather than too great a haste, is why he failed to produce a work of art, although his writings are full of artistry. His best stylistic achievements were in his shorter pieces ― notably his biographical essays. In his big books he was the pamphleteer trying to rein in his imagination, school himself to the demands of a formal treatise. He had powerful intuitions of logical and historical relationships, but was not at his happiest in sustained argument. Like Marshall, his concentration came in short bursts. His temperament was too restless, his mind too constantly active, and bursting out with ideas and plans, for thinking in solitude.
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About Robert Skidelsky
Robert Jacob Alexander, Baron Skidelsky, FBA (born 25 April 1939), is a British economic historian.
Also Known As
Alternative Names:
Robert Jacob Alexander Skidelsky
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Professor Robert Jacob Alexander Skidelsky, Baron Skidelsky
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Baron Skidelsky
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Lord Skidelsky
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Additional quotes by Robert Skidelsky
The question remains: to what extent were the successes and failures of the golden age the result of Keynesian theory, however bastardized? The quick answer is: to a much greater extent in the former than in the latter. Keynesianism provided an analytical framework for organizing policy choices. It also provided ad hoc rationalizations for what governments wanted to do for other reasons. At the rhetorical level, these were important. They created the expectation that full employment would be maintained by policy. This reinforced the favourable background for business investment. To a more limited extent, Keynesian policy as practised in the 1 9 6os brought the golden age into crisis: but there were more profound reasons relating to the drift of social policy (sometimes called the 'revolution in entitlements'), the role of the United States in the world, and the weakness of the Bretton Woods system of international institutions. So the old coach did make a difference.
Having said this, it is easy to see that he might have been deluding himself. He envisaged a modern capitalist economy governed by a Platonic ideal, and gentlemanly codes of behaviour. But once the capitalist genie is let out of the bottle it cannot be pressed into the service of a pre-modern ethics of the good life and pre-modern codes of behaviour. The good life in the classical sense presupposes that human desire has some ultimate end, or telos, whereas modern economic theory and life presuppose that it is insatiable. As regards behaviour, he took for granted a class-based system of values which economic progress was undermining. These were contradictions which Keynes never fully faced.
I could never take seriously the standard view that historians should take ideas as give, and confine themselves to their effects; or even worse, the Marxist-cum-Freudian view that ideas have no independent effects, but are themselves the effects of economic or psychological causes. If one accepts that ideas shape events, then a historian has to be able to describe the ideas or doctrines relevant to his topic as accurately as can a theologian, a philosopher, or an economist. If that requires a specialised training, so be it. Any account of Keynes's influence that failed to engage with his 'theology' would be seriously incomplete as history.
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