Thanks for your support. We Knightians need to stick together!

As to Holmes and eugenics. Well, have a look at Al Alschuler’s intellectual biography of the great man.

Sincerely,

Deirdre McCloskey

I am deeply sympathethic to your attempt at a meaningful retrieval of the practices of innovation and bourgeois values that form the basis of the Modern world. You are also right to wish a pox on both the houses of the left and right.

I think though that you may have misinterpreted Holmes’ remarks on eugenics. Holmes, at least in my readings appears to be an allyto your cause. A stauch defender of the “marketplace of ideas” as well as against all tawdry moralizing about Truth with a capital “T”.

Holmes is often a controversial figure precisely becasue the comments tend to be taken out of context. His views are much closer to Sir Isaiah Berlin’s than to any eugenicist.

He is of particular interest because he was a supporter of freedom of contract and disliked intensely the attempts by judges to assume that a robe was equal to the mantle of Truth.

Even so, this is a minor quibble. I very much look forward to such a worthwhile project. Anything that would bring back a Knightian sense of humanistic activity to economics and a reinvigoration of the rehtorical world-view is to be lauded. It is a return to the Chicago School but a generation earlier than commonly thought.