Status
Available
Call number
Genres
Publication
Simon & Schuster/Touchstone (1987), Edition: 6th Updated, 365 pages
Description
"The Worldly Philosophers is one of the bestselling economics books of all time. For more than half a century, it has not only enabled us to see more deeply into our history but helped us better understand our own times. In this seventh edition, Robert L. Heilbroner unearths a theme that connects thinkers as diverse as Adam Smith and Karl Marx. The theme is the common focus of their highly varied ideas-- namely, the search to understand how a capitalist society works."--Back cover.
User reviews
LibraryThing member FordStaff
Economics is considered among the driest of disciplines but if there is any chance for a captivating general history of economics it lays in this book. Most of the book focuses on the characters and ideas that have shaped economics throughout history. If you wish to know whether the study of
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Economics is compatible with your tastes this is a good starting point. The future reading section is also useful for those who wish to learn more. This book is not in-depth so it does not require a commitment to major in economics and is useful to the non-specialized who just want to learn history on this subject. Considering the subject this book is written well enough to keep the attention at most points, although can have trouble in others at no fault of the writer. Show Less
LibraryThing member tzagara
Some years ago i used to dislike (or even hate?) economics. I was not into that field anyway but even my slightest attempts to get in touch with the field were problematic. This was because i was probably not convinced that it was a scientific discipline or was unable to comprehend the "why" behind
Today, i don;t have the same opinion. In fact today i believe more or less the opposite.
What did happen that triggered this change? I just red this book.
Is it an accurate book on economic history? I don't know. Does it cover all important milestones of economic history adequately? Don;t know either. But what i do know is that it makes a very good case in convincing the reader that all the questions of "why" behind economics theories go far beyond profit, interest and similar domain specific concepts. It seems that economics is yet another way of manifesting the relationships, osmotic phenomena and interactions that are active within a society. In portraying the ideas of some economic thinkers its rather easy to witness this. But the interesting thing that the book also makes clear is how the different thinkers attempted - to express it in a worldlys philosophers way - not only to explain the world but also to change it. In such sense economics seemed to be a tool with which a society can be engineered rather that simply explained. Perceiving this dimension of economics was rather new to me. And of course the form the tool has depends heavily on the context of its conception and use: the form of the society and the life/habits of the tool-maker itself. The book makes each economic theory - as awkward as it may sounds - emerge naturally out of their contexts. Why is Marx's system so "brutal" and remorseless? Why would someone like Thorstein Veblen write a book entitled "The theory of the leisure class" ? How did Schumpeter come to the notion of Innovation? (and why is the main development plan of the European Union based on his ideas ?). The answers to these questions now look obvious.
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some economic theories (let alone the theories themselves) and thought of economic theories as boring. Needless to say that even not in my wildest dreams would i consider economists as philosophers.Today, i don;t have the same opinion. In fact today i believe more or less the opposite.
What did happen that triggered this change? I just red this book.
Is it an accurate book on economic history? I don't know. Does it cover all important milestones of economic history adequately? Don;t know either. But what i do know is that it makes a very good case in convincing the reader that all the questions of "why" behind economics theories go far beyond profit, interest and similar domain specific concepts. It seems that economics is yet another way of manifesting the relationships, osmotic phenomena and interactions that are active within a society. In portraying the ideas of some economic thinkers its rather easy to witness this. But the interesting thing that the book also makes clear is how the different thinkers attempted - to express it in a worldlys philosophers way - not only to explain the world but also to change it. In such sense economics seemed to be a tool with which a society can be engineered rather that simply explained. Perceiving this dimension of economics was rather new to me. And of course the form the tool has depends heavily on the context of its conception and use: the form of the society and the life/habits of the tool-maker itself. The book makes each economic theory - as awkward as it may sounds - emerge naturally out of their contexts. Why is Marx's system so "brutal" and remorseless? Why would someone like Thorstein Veblen write a book entitled "The theory of the leisure class" ? How did Schumpeter come to the notion of Innovation? (and why is the main development plan of the European Union based on his ideas ?). The answers to these questions now look obvious.
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LibraryThing member dbancrof
Curious about the theoretical insights of history's great economic minds? How about their financial troubles, sexual orientations, and eccentric views regarding extraterrestrial life? Perhaps one of the most engagingly written works of academic non-fiction, this highly readable classic covers the
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economic theories of Adam Smith, Karl Marx, John Maynard Keynes, Joseph Schumpeter, and others -- without skimping on the quirky biographical details and larger historical context. No stock tips, though, I'm afraid. Show Less
LibraryThing member antiquary
Easily the most approachable and comprehensible introduction to the history of economics that I have seen
LibraryThing member jahn
This is a literary work, something quite close to a novel. It’s a history of capitalism as seen through the life and times of several sociologists, political philosophers, and economists, in a language that successfully strives to be entertaining. There are many well turned sentences, many funny
A succinct distillation of the ideas of the best known economists it is not, and unbiased it is not either. The author has a social conscience and states so clearly: he finds it shameful that the US poor should be percentually larger than those in Western Europe, and thinks a lot could be learned in Washington by studying the Scandinavian countries.
In this edition the last page before the index warmly endorses the works of Norwegian economist Erik Reinert, who has a regular column in the journal “Klassekampen” (The Class War) and whose ideas are much like Chomsky's.
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anecdotes, and the dramatics are gripping.A succinct distillation of the ideas of the best known economists it is not, and unbiased it is not either. The author has a social conscience and states so clearly: he finds it shameful that the US poor should be percentually larger than those in Western Europe, and thinks a lot could be learned in Washington by studying the Scandinavian countries.
In this edition the last page before the index warmly endorses the works of Norwegian economist Erik Reinert, who has a regular column in the journal “Klassekampen” (The Class War) and whose ideas are much like Chomsky's.
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LibraryThing member brose72
A fascinating account of the lives and the times of great economic thinkers and social philosophers.
LibraryThing member keylawk
With a very personal Introduction by the author for this VIth edition.
Heilbroner introduces the "economic revolution". Humans have found only three ways to keep "the possibility of social breakdown" at bay: (1) organizing society around tradition, (2) submitting to authorities, or (3) allowing
My disagreements with Heilbroner stem from the ivory tower quality of his global pronouncements, but he is brilliant in biography and the historical positioning of his selected "economists": Adam Smith, Parson Malthus, David Ricardo, Frederick Bastiat, the Utopians Socialists, Karl Marx, the Victorians, Thorstein Veblen, Henry George, John Maynard Keynes, and Joseph Schumpeter.
By way of contextualizing the relevance of this work for today, post Heritage Foundation assault on the free market by monopolists, there is not the slightest suggestion drawn from the faintest shadow of a fact, which can support the late GOP suggestion that "the wealthy create jobs". This serious work was published in 1986, the last year of middle class growth and at the onset of the war declared by the Koch Brothers and executed by Roger Ailes on behalf of the GOP against the middle class. Clearly, its abundant message was swept aside, and political America stopped listening to economists.
Heilbroner introduces the "economic revolution". Humans have found only three ways to keep "the possibility of social breakdown" at bay: (1) organizing society around tradition, (2) submitting to authorities, or (3) allowing
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development of a "free market system". This last calls forth the economists. [21]My disagreements with Heilbroner stem from the ivory tower quality of his global pronouncements, but he is brilliant in biography and the historical positioning of his selected "economists": Adam Smith, Parson Malthus, David Ricardo, Frederick Bastiat, the Utopians Socialists, Karl Marx, the Victorians, Thorstein Veblen, Henry George, John Maynard Keynes, and Joseph Schumpeter.
By way of contextualizing the relevance of this work for today, post Heritage Foundation assault on the free market by monopolists, there is not the slightest suggestion drawn from the faintest shadow of a fact, which can support the late GOP suggestion that "the wealthy create jobs". This serious work was published in 1986, the last year of middle class growth and at the onset of the war declared by the Koch Brothers and executed by Roger Ailes on behalf of the GOP against the middle class. Clearly, its abundant message was swept aside, and political America stopped listening to economists.
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LibraryThing member ecw0647
Read and enjoyed many decades ago.
LibraryThing member Philogos
This book provides a fascinating introduction to the history of economic thought, albeit from an American point of view.
Starting with Adam Smith and tracing the evolution of economics through Malthus and Ricardo, JS Mill, the Victorian Socialists, Marx, Veblen, Keynes and Schumpeter, it provides a
Definitely recommended for anyone wanting an overview of what the issues are.
Starting with Adam Smith and tracing the evolution of economics through Malthus and Ricardo, JS Mill, the Victorian Socialists, Marx, Veblen, Keynes and Schumpeter, it provides a
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rich set of models for thinking about how society produces and distributes wealth.Definitely recommended for anyone wanting an overview of what the issues are.
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LibraryThing member madepercy
What I particularly like about this book is how Heilbroner begins with the term “political economy”, then relegates it to “economics” (as happened in history), only to revive the term at the end where he tells us that Schumpeter is the last worldly philosopher as we have – more or less
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– learnt all we can through a scientific approach based significantly on grand assumptions about the behaviour of homo economicus, and it is time to reintroduce politics. That Heilbroner ends with Schumpeter is interesting. I am not sure if his eschewing of Hayek (who gets a few mentions in the book) is ideological. Nonetheless, it is an interesting approach to understanding the economy although a newer edition (the seventh was released in 1999) might be useful to mention the impact of the return to free trade and back again with the recent Global Financial Crisis. Regardless, this should be the first port of call for novice economists or political scientists alike. As a second reading, I found the suggested reading list at the end of the book to be most helpful to guide a revisit to the many classics which are now readily available for free on the Net. Indeed, it was well-worth revisiting Heilbroner and I may do so yet again. Show Less
LibraryThing member breic
It has some great anecdotes on early economists, but ends with Schumpeter—far too soon. The scale is so broad that we only really learn about macroeconomics—never micro—and there is at least as much sociology or political theory as macroeconomics. Heilbroner's own economic judgements are
> It was said that he [Adam Smith] had brewed himself a beverage of bread and butter and pronounced it the worst cup of tea he had ever tasted.
> In contrast with Bastiat, who was drawn to the irrationalities of economic sophistry, or with Henry George, who saw the injustices of life cloaked with economic sanction, or with Hobson, who looked for hidden destructive tendencies in the impersonal processes of capitalist economics, Marshall was primarily interested in the self-adjusting, self-correcting nature of the economic world. As his most brilliant pupil, J. M. Keynes, would later write, he created "a whole Copernican system, in which all the elements of the economic universe are kept in their places by mutual counterpoise and interaction."
> If Marx's view was right, for example, and the proletariat was irreconcilably and diametrically opposed to the capitalist, what prevented the revolution from breaking out at once? Veblen provides an answer. The lower classes are not at swords' points with the upper; they are bound up with them by the intangible but steely bonds of common attitudes. The workers do not seek to displace their managers; they seek to emulate them. They themselves acquiesce in the general judgment that the work they do is somehow less "dignified" than the work of their masters, and their goal is not to rid themselves of a superior class but to climb up to it. In the theory of the leisure class lies the kernel of a theory of social stability.
> Planck turned to Keynes and told him that he had once considered going into economics himself. But he had decided against it—it was too hard. Keynes repeated the story with relish to a friend back at Cambridge. "Why, that’s odd," said the friend. "Bertrand Russell was telling me just the other day that he'd also thought about going into economics. But he decided it was too easy."
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often questionable, and his last chapter, summing up and suggesting a future for economics, is atrocious. It is also interesting how he manages to completely ignore some of today's major economic and political issues, e.g., inequality. > It was said that he [Adam Smith] had brewed himself a beverage of bread and butter and pronounced it the worst cup of tea he had ever tasted.
> In contrast with Bastiat, who was drawn to the irrationalities of economic sophistry, or with Henry George, who saw the injustices of life cloaked with economic sanction, or with Hobson, who looked for hidden destructive tendencies in the impersonal processes of capitalist economics, Marshall was primarily interested in the self-adjusting, self-correcting nature of the economic world. As his most brilliant pupil, J. M. Keynes, would later write, he created "a whole Copernican system, in which all the elements of the economic universe are kept in their places by mutual counterpoise and interaction."
> If Marx's view was right, for example, and the proletariat was irreconcilably and diametrically opposed to the capitalist, what prevented the revolution from breaking out at once? Veblen provides an answer. The lower classes are not at swords' points with the upper; they are bound up with them by the intangible but steely bonds of common attitudes. The workers do not seek to displace their managers; they seek to emulate them. They themselves acquiesce in the general judgment that the work they do is somehow less "dignified" than the work of their masters, and their goal is not to rid themselves of a superior class but to climb up to it. In the theory of the leisure class lies the kernel of a theory of social stability.
> Planck turned to Keynes and told him that he had once considered going into economics himself. But he had decided against it—it was too hard. Keynes repeated the story with relish to a friend back at Cambridge. "Why, that’s odd," said the friend. "Bertrand Russell was telling me just the other day that he'd also thought about going into economics. But he decided it was too easy."
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LibraryThing member Paul_S
Uncritical and sometimes innacurate or at least tendecious account of a mixed selection of economist and fringe charaltans. Don't really see much value in this as it's all very superficial and willl not give you any grasp of the presented economists ideas.
LibraryThing member mykl-s
This is history of when what we call economics was still part of philosophy, with some more recent economists too. Each one is worth knowing about.
Subjects
Awards
Notable Books List (1953)
Language
Original language
English
Original publication date
1953
Physical description
365 p.; 8.5 inches
ISBN
067163318X / 9780671633189