------------ EH.NET BOOK REVIEW --------------  
Published by EH.NET (October 2006)  
  
Sandra J. Peart and David M. Levy, _The "Vanity of the Philosopher":   
 From Equality to Hierarchy in Post-Classical Economics_. Ann Arbor:   
University of Michigan Press, 2005. xviii + 323 pp. $40 (cloth),   
ISBN: 0-472-11496-4.  
  
Reviewed for EH.NET by J. Daniel Hammond, Department of Economics,   
Wake Forest University.  
  
  
Peart and Levy's book takes the reader well off the beaten track of   
histories of classical and neoclassical economics. In place of laws   
of production and distribution, the marginal revolution, and other   
standard topics for historians of economics, Peart and Levy take us   
on a historical tour of the struggle over one of the most basic   
premises of social analysis, what sort of creature it is that   
economists study. In the beginning was Adam Smith, who believed that:  
  
     The difference of natural talents in different men is, in reality, much  
     less than we are aware of; and the very different genius which appears to  
     distinguish men of different professions, when grown up to maturity, is not  
     upon many occasions so much the cause, as the effect of the division of  
     labour. The difference between the most dissimilar characters, between a  
     philosopher and a common street porter, for example, seems to arise not so  
     much from nature, as from habit, custom, and education (_Wealth of  
     Nations_, I.2.?4).  
  
Smith's belief that humans are born with capacities more equal than   
unequal led him to build his analysis on the premise of human   
equality in the capacity for making decisions (analytical   
egalitarianism) and to look for the causes of observed differences   
across people and populations in the effects of institutions,   
incentives, and chance. Classical economists who followed Smith as   
analytical egalitarians included, among others, Thomas Robert   
Malthus, David Ricardo, Robert Torrens, Harriet Martineau, Nassau   
Senior, and most importantly for Peart and Levy's account, John   
Stuart Mill.  
  
By the time neoclassical economics and other varieties of   
post-classical economics appeared in the late nineteenth century,   
analytical egalitarianism was being supplanted by a belief that human   
beings differ in their capacities in ways that render the assumption   
of human homogeneity unrealistic and inappropriate. Thus, William   
Stanley Jevons worried that working-class consumers made poor choices   
and Irving Fisher compared the Irish unfavorably with the Scots in   
terms of their capacity for foresight. F.Y. Edgeworth argued that for   
analytical and policy purposes the principle "every man, and every   
woman, to count for one" should be used with caution. Shifting from   
analytical egalitarianism to a working hypothesis of heterogeneity   
and hierarchy led the post-classical economists to jettison another   
of Adam Smith's presuppositions, that sympathy should have a role in   
social analysis. Smithian self-interest and the invisible hand were   
cleaved away from his notions of sympathy and the impartial spectator.  
  
Peart and Levy's objective is to explain why this transformation of   
economics took place. Their story is one of external forces from the   
scientific and literary cultures, particularly the influence of   
Charles Darwin. In nineteenth century England evolution was in the   
wind, and this fueled racist reactions to the Irish immigration in   
the 1840s and 1850s and the Jamaican revolt of former slaves in 1865.   
These events were context for the alignments of competing coalitions,   
classical economists and evangelicals on the side of human equality,   
and literary figures, anthropologists, and ethnologists on the side   
of human hierarchies. By the end of the nineteenth century, economics   
had gone over to the other side, with many economists joining   
"progressives" in their enthusiasm for eugenic state control of human   
fertility.  
  
The historical accounts in this book are colorful and riveting, not   
the least because of abundant attention to the literary and   
scientific figures who were the classical economists' critics, and to   
Victorian England's popular culture. There are numerous illustrations   
from _Punch_ magazine and other periodicals of the era and outlines   
of what today seem quirky ideas such as John Ruskin's chemical   
political economy and the related Victorian idea that a person's   
choices might actually transform their racial identity. Both are   
instances of malleable human nature. This is relevant for our time   
because the same questions with which the Victorians struggled are   
manifest in the popularity of books such as Steven Pinker's _The   
Blank Slate_ (2002).  
  
Peart and Levy's history has a moral, which is that economists' turn   
from the human homogeneity assumption to heterogeneity and hierarchy   
need not and should not have occurred. Classical economists'   
assumption that humans share the same innate capacity for making   
prudent choices was well grounded, even if subsequent scientific   
opinions indicated otherwise. They argue that classical economists   
had good scientific reasons for taking institutions seriously, and   
that economists went awry when theory was shorn of institutions.   
Also, implicit in Peart and Levy's account is the notion that the   
best science of any era can be an insufficient if not faulty guide   
for social and political life.  
  
But where does one turn apart from science? For Peart and Levy the   
answer is to morals. They are repulsed by the history of Victorian   
science which they report. It is not on scientific but on moral   
grounds that they disapprove. They quote Lionel Robbins on the facts   
and morality of the presumption of differential capacities for   
happiness across human populations:  
  
     I have always felt that, as a first approximation in handling questions  
     relating to the lives and actions of large masses of people, the approach  
     which counts each man as one, and, on that assumption, asks which way lies  
     the greatest happiness, is less likely to lead one astray than any of the  
     absolute systems. I do not believe, and I have never believed, that in fact  
     men are necessarily equal or should always be judged as such. But I do  
     believe that, in most cases, political calculations which do not treat them  
     _as if_ they were equal are morally revolting. (_Economic Journal_, 48:  
     December 1938, 635)  
  
Having brought the history of analytical egalitarianism forward in   
time from classical economics into post-classical economics in this   
book, Peart and Levy are now exploring Adam Smith's sources in Stoic   
philosophy. Their historical project is a reminder that whether we   
recognize it or not, economics is and always has been grounded on   
visions of human nature that are not exclusively scientific. Theirs   
is a worthy effort to recover some of the understanding of human   
nature that was lost in the nineteenth and twentieth century romance   
with science.  
  
  
J. Daniel Hammond is the editor, with Claire H. Hammond of _Making   
Chicago Price Theory: Friedman-Stigler Correspondence, 1945-1957_   
(Routledge, 2006).  
  
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