The Rhetoric of Economics (Rhetoric of the Human Sciences)

Rating:
Summary: The Donald before the Deirdre
Review: Although the fame of the author has taken a probably undesirable sensationalistic turn as a result of Donald's becoming, in 1996, Deirdre, the ouevre of his real fame, genius, and erudition are on display in this, the first of his trilogy on the Rhetoric of Inquiry, economics style. The second two successively are "If You're So Smart..." and "Knowledge and Persuasion in Economics". Though the third is, in my opinion, one of the most amazing works ever penned on economic methodology, his magnum opus (all three were written pre "crossing" so the pronoun "him" will be used). Cliche alert: This book should be required reading for ALL graduate economics students (though, again, the third even much more so). 'S hackneyed but 's true, friends. Buy it, read it, and you will feel what it's like to be inside the mind of a scholarly genius. He focuses on the rhetorical tetrad in economic analysis as a way of storytelling (rather than apodictic dogma) and a quick glance at his glossary will show you two things: 1. McCloskey has read pretty much every book and scholarly paper in the library on his subject and 2. His postmodernist proclivities. Although despite this many will be suprised to find that McCloskey is a libertarian, laissez-faire economist, a rarity even at the Chicago School, where he was reared and studied under Alchian, Stiglitz, and Friedman, among others. McCloskey in fact inspired me to see through a lot of the dishonest and snide ideological incompetents who have used postmodernism as a genus from which they derive their incoherent leftist, socialist positions. For example the laughably UNintellectual Eric Alterman (who is actually a fine researcher) who cites approvingly Hans Georg Gadamer and Richard Rorty, fellow leftists, with embarrassing naif and lack of understanding of their works or any integrated understanding of where they derive their own leftism. When, in fact, as McCloskey and others have shown, it (postmodernism qua socialism/progressivism/liberalism) is a nonsequitur, and proves too much when it's not. I have always been VERY dissappointed in the paucity of libertarian and conservative attempts at reconciling with the last 50+ years of postmodernist philosophical contributions to the literature. It is NOT postmodernism qua socialism v. modernism qua classical and neoclassical economics; and it never could be, according to both systems. McCloskey is your savior if you too want to be in-step philosophically and maintain your laissez-faire; laissez-passer. He is an amazingly endowed writer, thinker, and economist, but is truly at his best when writing on methodology and philosophy as it pertains to the dismal science. The book critizies armchair theorizing much as Feyerabend and James did and positivism as much as the Austrians currently do, though both will probably be dissatisfied to the extent at which he takes this analysis and the value he grants that both may have, taken synchretistically. However, this rapprochement between apriorism and positivism may be his single greatest achievement, even if it was merely a means to an end, losing no irony in his self-professed pragmatism! All-in-all, a wonderful book, very enlightening. Apodictics beware, McCloskey is not a kind foe!

Rating:
Summary: A surprisingly useful read
Review: Even though this isn't the intent of the book (it's a persuasive work about the role of rhetoric in economics), I found this to be a really useful read when trying to write better economics papers of my own. It's ironically better in this regard than McCloskey's more explicitly instructional books, particular "Economical Writing," because of its emphasis on ideas rather than on rules; it advances a way of thinking about economics that makes economics easier to write about. For example, to McCloskey, economic models are metaphors, and I've found that writing about an economic model as a kind of metaphor rather than as some sort of idealized version of the truth is much easier. I don't pretend to have understood all of its insights (it's a challenging read), but the ones I understood were very helpful.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent Work
Review: This book provides unique insight into the rehetoric of economics and the social sciences.