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Which Economists Should I Teach In My Philosophy Class?
On the left: Marx
I teach the Modern to Contemporary Philosophy class at my university. I have decided to add a new lesson next time: After we cover Marx, we’re going to survey some other economist-philosophers from Marx’ time and afterwards.
On the right: Smith
Which economists should I cover? At present, my plan for this lesson covers Bastiat, Von Mises, Keynes, Hayek, and Friedman. If you’re going to cover, say, six to eight economists of the 1800s and 1900s in a philosophy class, does the best list consist of these guys + Marx?
I have no intention of dropping Marx; he’s just too influential to ignore. But I would love to hear your list of five to seven others. (Many of you know more economists than I do, and others who may be as uninformed as I am may be uninformed in a different direction!)
Published in Economics, General, Religion & Philosophy
Thank you, everyone! You’re all awesome. There’s a lot of great commentary I will have to sift through more slowly later.
It’s morning in my time zone, and I need to get a cup of tea and the read the Bible. In addition, I feel the effects of an emerging Rico-holism on me, and I should try to take it easier today.
A lot of support for adding Ricardo, Coase, and Becker! Here’s the current tally (taking every suggestion as a vote):
What happened to Hazlitt and Maybury? :-( (sniff…)
Comment #59. I didn’t ignore them entirely. They seemed like textbook suggestions rather than suggestions for economists-philosophers to survey. (I hope I got that right.)
Ah, thanks, I understand. Sorry to be so needy…
Marx was no economist. Keynes was a rotten one who has served as a crutch for many rotten ones who followed. They are the global warmest of economics whose only interest is justifying one level or another of state expansion. The most important new idea in economics in the last 50 years is rational expectations which is best represented by Robert Lucas. The work of Lucas and his fellow travelers has rendered obsolete almost all previous macro and business cycle theory. At root it is the idea that you can’t fool all the people the same way all the time. Austrian, Keynesian, and Monetarist theories all flunk this basic fact of life. In Monetarism labor markets are always distorted in the same way by confusion regarding real vs nominal wages. In Austrian, markets are always distorted in the same way by confusion over real vs government determined interest rates. Add that there is no real case for government having the power to control real interest rates. As for Keynesian “theory” it is simply bat XXXX crazy.
William Stanley Jevons, Leon Walras, and Carl Menger seem to be missing. No marginal analysis, no modern economics.
I’m glad to see that there continues to be little or no objection to keeping Marx, Bastiat, Von Mises, Keynes, Hayek, and Milton Friedman (though there is plenty of criticism of some of them).
The current tally (taking every suggestion as a vote):
Thomas Sowell, an economist who does the best job of explaining economics to non-economists of anyone I have ever read.
Another vote for Thomas Sowell. If some of your students were inspired to read Basic Economics, the world would be a saner place. Sowell’s research across time and cultures illustrates economic principles untethered to current headlines.
I agree with your list. In studying Bastiat center you teaching around his “The Law”. It is an easy short read that a layman can fairly easily understand. I can’t think of two better books to teach students about economics than “The Law” and Thomas Sowell “Basic Economics”.
To me Thomas Sowell’s “Basic Economics” should be the default book in high school for that half a credit students need to get in economics. The crap I read in high school was from a Christian publisher but was so poorly written a year later I could not remember a single thing from it. So I can’t even remember if they were teaching sound economics.
I don’t like Ayn Rand, I think most of her ideas are rubbish. However, I think you have to include her in your class as maybe a transition between economics and moral philosophy, since she was influential in both. I just think she is way to influential on a sizable minority of people to ignore in a modern/contemporary philosophy class.
As far as I know, Sowell is not a very influential character in the field of economics or a particularly influential philosopher, so there’s not much I can do.
Unless I try to copy and distribute up to 10% of Sowell’s book, I think the most I can do with him is give him an honorable mention if we have time, and maybe recommend his book to students.
(That’s not to say he doesn’t deserve quite a bit more. He’s at least as wise a philosopher and economist as probably at least 85% of people in those fields.)
Curious – why do you want to include “economist philosophers” in the first place? What philosophical principles, worked out in economics, are you hoping to discuss?
That raises the topic of the relationship between philosophy and economics, and while I have my own views there, I’d be interested in what you would say.
(Might be a post by itself, not trying to hijack this one.)
I’m just trying to help them understand the history of modern-contemporary philosophy. Economics is a pretty big part of it, with Smith and Locke and Marx. I’m not really going for any particular principles.
Coase will be easier to read than Von Mises, in my opinion. Friedman even easier than those. Gary Becker is interesting. Too bad you can’t read Adam Smith, since his earlier book “Theory of Moral Sentiments” is far more philosophical than anything most economists ever write… Hayek, of course, is good.
My suggestion would be to send a nice email to Russ Roberts, who hosts the EconTalk podcast. He’s had shows that highlight all of the above economists, and could give you a very good overview of the way they might be structured in a class (i.e. if you’re talking Marx, you might want someone from his time who offered a counteropinion; Hayek and Keynes actually dialogued, so that one is obvious, etc…)
You can find Russ at http://www.econtalk.org. If you start with “I’m a college professor trying to structure a class,” I’m sure he would be more than happy to contribute. FWIW, he studied under Becker and Friedman at the University of Chicago and was personal friends with both.
I’m having a hard time understanding what you’re using as a limiting principle, here… After all, you’re teaching Marx in a philosophy class and wanting to add economists. With Coase, say, you get the Coase theorem, which I do agree is somewhat philosophical; Von Mises, in his book Human Action, certainly philosophizes as much as he economizes (yeah, I’m making up words). But still, you seem to be crafting a course that would be frowned upon by most liberal-arts college professors, so why are you not simply teaching what you know to be good (i.e. Sowell, etc…) and limiting yourself, seemingly only partially, on what would be generally accepted?
Note, I had to read “Democracy for the Few” in college, in a class by a self-described socialist. As I see it, if you’re teaching the class, you pick the material.
The thing is that this is not a class. This is just one 50-minute lesson–or two 50-minute lessons counting the Marx lesson.
I just can’t do much philosophy-economics in this class without seriously short-changing philosophy of religion, or philosophy of science, or metaphysics, or epistemology, or ethics. We gotta cover Descartes and Bacon (the philosopher, not the food) and Hobbes and Locke and Hume and Reid and Kant and Hegel and Marx and Nietzsche and James and Ayer and Kuhn and MacIntyre and Plantinga and Iqbal and (hopefully) the Dalai Lama–and I might be forgetting something. (LEWIS: THE ABOLITION OF MAN. That’s what I forgot.)
So the priorities are (1) to give them an intro to a few economist-philosophers they don’t know about (they generally already know a bit about Marx and Smith) and (2) to give them a contrary perspective to Marx (since he tends to be overly popular, and since I think he’s largely wrong) and (3) to give them a decent intro to the overlap of economics and philosophy.
For these priorities, I’m pretty sure I must have Keynes and Friedman, and probably Hayek; and Hayek and Bastiat and Von Mises are fun and useful. I’m not sure Sowell contributes to these priories much, unless I try using him as assigned reading; if I’m wrong about that, I hope someone can enlighten me.
I currently plan to make him the most honorable of honorable mentions, right before Laffer, and to recommend Basic Economics.
I might be interested in what I have to say too. I have no idea what it would be right now, except that it would have something to do with the quest for the good life. A good topic for a new thread indeed!
Hernando de Soto, whose book is short and effective regarding why a third world is in its economy condition.
◾De Soto, Hernando. The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else. Basic Books, 2000. ISBN 0-465-01614-6
On the Philosophy of Economics – oh we could have a few debates on this one!
Also on the Stanford Philosophy site is this article about economics and justice.
Either article would be a good exercise in critical thinking, and shatter a few entrenched assumptions. And serve as fodder for good battles here on Ricochet. I may have to post on these …
Yes, this makes it much more clear. As far as Keynes goes, he is far better than Marx. I don’t really see why you must have him, though, except inasmuch as you’re discussing the impact that individuals have had… along those lines, Marx has had a strong influence, but Keynes has had a very similar influence on very similar people. Hayek, unfortunately, is not all that influential, even though he is much better. All that depends, of course, on what you’re attempting to convey. Adam Smith probably does the best job of incorporating actual philosophy into economics… what Marx shows us is that people will often be drawn in by something that allows them to place their problems at the feet of a third party (ok, my paraphrase), which is an interesting philosophical question, I suppose, but that is in spite of, not because of, his own philosophy. Someone like Friedman dealt with monetary policy, not philosophy. Becker is interesting from a sociological perspective inasmuch as he wrote about things that might have been somewhat taboo – or, he treated people like commodities, which is useful and interesting, but gives people pause from a moral standpoint.
If you want a very easy (but brilliant) text, consider “Economics in One Lesson” by Henry Hazlitt.
I once again suggest asking the question to Russ Roberts regarding who might be a good counter to Marx. If you choose Von Mises, don’t even dream of asking anyone to pick up “Human Action,” which is enormous. He wrote a great little book called “Liberalism: The Classical Tradition,” that would be a relatively easy read for college students and a reasonable expectation from any professor.
Lots of great suggestions. I have to agree with Muleskinner that Carl Menger definitely should be included for creating (with Walras and Jevons all working independently) the Subjective Theory of Value which relegated to the dustbin of history all of Marx’s economic/philosophical theories because they were based on the Labor Theory of Value.
Menger was also responsible for the Austrian School of Economics from which Böhm-Bawerk , Von Mises, and Hayek emerged.
By the way, it was Thomas Carlyle who actually put the “dismal” in dismal science, although he was inspired by Malthus, Ricardo, Mill and the other Classicals. (http://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/dismalscience.asp)
I often give students readings from Plato.Stanford. Maybe I should look into those for assigning a reading.
And, yes, a new thread sometime on the subject would be neat.
I’m not even sure I’m giving them a reading. If I do it will have to be an online encyclopedia, or something I can legally distribute myself. If it includes Von Mises, I’m afraid it will be limited to mere paragraphs.
Thank you for that suggestion also. It’s from 1946; that means I can legally distribute it.
Thank you, everyone. You’re all awesome.
The current tally: (taking every suggestion as a vote):
I’m ready to start making a few decisions on all this. I’m going to look into adding one or two to the main lesson, starting with Ricardo, Coase, and Becker, who received the most votes, and then some folks who received few votes but very high praise like Alfred Marshall. (If I don’t add these to the main lesson they will likely end up as honorable mentions at the end of the lesson.)
I’m dividing the honorable mentions at the end of the lesson plan into two categories: historical dead ones and living ones.
In the historical dead category:
In the living category:
You may notice that doesn’t cover all suggestions; I’m only ready to make some decisions at this point.
There is an online copy available somewhere. I’ll see if I can find it.
Wikipedia had a link to an html edition.
I’ve added Ricardo to my main lesson plan. Principle of Comparative Advantage: useful and insightful. Emphasis on international free market and global trade: helpful counter to Marx. And also very influential in economic history.
And I’m adding Becker as an honorable mention.