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Over the last twenty years, Ross B. Emmett has explored the work of Frank H. Knight, the philosopher of the Chicago School of economics. Knight occupies a paradoxical place in the history of Chicago economics: vital to the tradition's teaching of price theory and the twentieth-century re-articulation of the defense of free enterprise and liberal democracy, yet a critic (in advance) of the empirical and methodological orientation that has characterized Chicago economics and the rest of the discipline in the post-war period, and skeptical of liberalism's prospects. In the course of his investigation of Knight's work, Emmett has written not only about Knight's economics and philosophy, the nature of Chicago economics, and Knight's place in the Chicago tradition, but also about the application of hermeneutic theory to the history of economics, the relation of the history of economic thought to the discipline of economics, and the relation between economics and religion. His eight-volume collection of primary-source material on The Chicago Tradition in Economics, 1892-1945 was published by Routledge in 2001.
List of contents
Introduction by Warren J. Samuels Section 1: Historical Reconstruction in the History of Economics 1. Exegesis, Hermeneutics, and Interpretation 2.Reflections on ‘Breaking Away’: Economics as Science and the History of Economics as History of Science Section 2: Interpreting Frank Knight 3. The Therapeutic Quality of Frank H. Knight’s Risk, Uncertainty and Profit, 4. Frank Knight’s Dissent from Progressive Social Science 5. What is Truth’ in Capital Theory?: Five Stories Relevant to the Evaluation of Frank Knight's Contribution to the Capital Controversy 6. Maximizers vs. Good Sports: Frank Knight’s Curious Understanding of Exchange Behaviour 7. Frank H. Knight on the Conflict of Values in Economic Life Section 3: Interpreting Frank Knight and Chicago Economics 8. Frank H. Knight, Max Weber, Chicago Economics, and Institutionalism 9. Entrenching Disciplinary Competence: The Role of General Education and Graduate Study in Chicago Economics 10. De Gustibus Est Disputandum: Frank H. Knight's Response to George Stigler and Gary Becker's ‘De Gustibus Non Est Disputandum’ 11. Did the Chicago School Reject Frank Knight?, Section 4: Economics, Religion and Politics 12. Frank Knight: Economics vs. Religion 13. Is Economics a Religion 14. The Idea of a Secular Society Revisited.
About the author
Ross B. Emmett is Associate Professor of Political Economy and Political Theory & Constitutional Democracy, and co-director of The Michigan Center for Innovation and Economic Prosperity at James Madison College, Michigan State University, USA.
Summary
In this book, Ross B.Emmett looks at Frank Knight's economics and philosophy, the nature of Chicago economics, his place in the Chicago tradition and also about the application of hermeneutic theory to the history of economics.
