Bringing them alive

Abstract

This paper continues an ongoing reflection on the ways we do the history of economic thought, marked some decades ago by Mark Blaug. It offers a non-canonical typology comprising three alternative approaches, distinguished on the basis of the way they conceive of the link between statements, old and contemporary: the extensive, the retrospective, and the intensive approaches. It shows that the latter potentially challenges contemporary knowledge by introducing statements which do not belong to it. Despite its being a heuristic, it appears as a privileged route by which the history of economic thought can begin to engage with economic theory.

Keywords:

• History of economic thought
• presidential address
• methodology

JEL CODES:

• B00
• B41

Acknowledgements

I have greatly benefitted from comments and suggestions provided by Laurie Bréban on an earlier draft of this paper. I also wish to thank Ben Young for his patient and efficient reading, and two anonymous referees of this Journal for their valuable recommendations.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 This paper develops a general argument presented in the Presidential Address to the 2018 ESHET Conference in Madrid, borrowed in particular from Lapidus (1996, 2016).

2 I employ the underspecific word “statement” precisely for its wide meaning, intending thereby to encompass judgements, propositions, beliefs, and so on.

3 The example continues Rorty’s discussion. See Rorty 1984, p. 53.

4 Strictly speaking, when Sraffa reviewed the circumstances in which he made his finding of the idea of a basic commodity, he himself cast doubt on the idea that he might have been led from his historical investigation to his analytical discovery: “It should perhaps be stated that it was only when the Standard system and the distinction between basics and non-basics had emerged in the course of the present investigation that the above interpretation of Ricardo’s theory suggested itself as a natural consequence” (Sraffa 1960, p. 93).