Maynard Keynes and William Paley: Rarely Explored Connections

抄録

Keynes and Paley are two names rarely conjoined in the literature of either figure. Keynes, however, made significant references to Paley in four of his essays. Most commentators treat these as historical ephemera, but closer investigations reveal that they illuminate key aspects of his thought. These include whether Paley or Malthus was the first Cambridge economist, methodological issues concerning the nature of economic theorising and how best to disseminate economic thought, and relationships between scientific and religious explanations. They also serve the useful task of clarifying and correcting certain errors in Keynes’s essays due to exaggeration or inaccuracy. In these contexts, Keynes’s remarks on Paley repay investigation.