©Deirdre Nansen McCloskey | COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL


deirdremccloskey Deirdre Nansen McCloskey
Distinguished Professor of Economics, History, English, and Communication
University of Illinois at Chicago

Professor of Social Thought
Academia Vitae, Deventer, NL

Professor Extraordinary, Department of Economics, University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa 		     Deirdre McCloskey is an economist and economic historian who around 1980 got interested in the rhetoric of persuasion in her field, and then wider literary matters, such as literary and social theory. Her main project for the next few years will be writing a four-volume tome on The Bourgeois Virtues. Volume 1 was published as a trade book by the University of Chicago Press in 2006, and widely and on the whole favorably reviewed. She is a free-market economist, and so the book is theologically speaking an "apology" for capitalism. But she tries to be fair to her friends on the left and right. ...
     The oddest personal fact about Deirdre is that until 1995 she was "Donald." She has written on the matter... Read entire text »
What is crucial, Amélie Oksenberg Rorty wrote in 1983, is

Our ability to engage in continuous conversation, testing one another, discovering our hidden presuppositions, changing our minds because we have listened to the voices of our fellows. Lunatics also change their minds, but their minds change with the tides of the moon and not because they have listened, really listened, to their friends' questions and objections.

A.O. Rorty, "Experiments in Philosophical Genre: Descartes' Meditations," pp. 545-565 in Critical Inquiry 9: 562

From a discussion on the top books of the decade (See AtlasNetwork.org, December 29, 2009):
"Arguably the most ambitious classical liberal academic project of the decade, The Bourgeois Virtues argues not only that the market economy is more efficient, but it makes us better, more virtuous people. ... McCloskey presents her case to a target audience that has been conditioned to throw rocks at the sound of the word 'bourgeoisie.' She balances her herculean effort with a conversational tone that doesn't compromise her erudition. By promoting hope, faith, love, justice, courage, thrift and prudence, this book manages quite successfully to defend the thesis that the market not only allows man to gain the world, but also helps him not to lose his soul."
Read more on The Bourgeois Virtues || Praise for The Bourgeois Virtues

Now available: Yet Still Old England Disdained the Market and the Bourgeoisie , chapter 8 of Deirdre McCloskey's draft version of Bourgeois Revaluation

A note from the author:
Dear Reader: This is a rough draft as of January 2010. The three asterisks *** or the bold or NNN (for a name) or DDDD (for a date) and the many pages at the end with "items [perhaps] to be inserted" indicate only some of the numerous things to be done. I welcome comments, directly at deirdre2@uic.edu or in the comments section of the online chapters.

The Bourgeois Revaluation:
How Innovation Became Virtuous, 1600-1848
[Vol. 3 of The Bourgeois Era]
© Deirdre McCloskey 2010

  1. Medieval and Early Modern Economies had Bourgeois Capitalists
  2. And So Did the Ancient World
  3. But the Bourgeoisie has been Disdained
  4. There were Precursors of a Self-Respecting Bourgeoisie
  5. Yet on the Whole the Bourgeoisies have been Precarious
  6. The Dutch Preached Bourgeois Virtue
  7. And the Dutch Bourgeoisie was Virtuous
  8. Yet Still Old England Disdained the Market and the Bourgeoisie
  9. And Aristocratic England Scorned Even Measurement
  10. And So the English Bourgeoisie Could Not "Rise"
  11. But in the Late Seventeenth Century the English Changed
  12. The Words Show the Change
  13. NEW CHAPTER, UNTITLED YET
  14. Bourgeois England Loved Measurement
  15. The New Values Triumphed
  16. A Change in Talk Made the Modern World
  17. Its Roots Were Not All Material
  18. It Led to a Hockey Stick of Growth
  19. The Rhetoric Was Necessary, and Maybe Sufficient
  20. Ethical Ideas and Their Rhetoric Mattered
  21. It was a Rhetorical Change, Not a Deep Cultural One
  22. {{ The Outcome was the Bourgeois Era}} not drafted

McCloskey's forthcoming review of Joel Mokyr's The Enlightened Economy: An Economic History of Britain 1700-1859. (Post date: 23 January 2010.)

Radio interview on The Bourgeois Virtues (16 January 2010): "Isn't Capitalism Basically Corrupt?" with McCloskey and host Michael McKay.

"A Very Special Interview with Dr. Deirdre McCloskey, Distinguished Professor of Economics, History, English and Communications at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Deirdre is a Significant Scholar on the history of Capitalism. She has been writing for decades on the connection between Ethics and Capitalism. Her book Bourgeois Virtues presents what the mainstream press calls 'the radical notion' that Capitalism is Good For Us, that Markets Improve Ethics and that Capitalism has made us better as well as richer. ... This interview provides wonderful background [on how capitalism] causes us to live in a safer, more generous and more wealthy society."
—Radio Free Market


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