Alan

You imagine I have said Keynes’ position was “just a stupid idea”.  I have
not.  The person you are criticising is a figment of your imagination.  Your
characterisation that  “Russell of course considered Wittgenstein a genius”
told me that you are far out of your depth, and in no position to steer the
course of this investigation.

David

Thanks.  Traction at last.  When I wrote  “I will not put up with that.” in
my last it was a (admittedly subtle) clue – I was (near) quoting Pelagius.
(If anyone did spot it, please tell!)

You missed that clue, but did spot the other big clue IMO – in Keynes  “We
repudiated all versions of the doctrine of original sin”.  But you failed to
think it through to its logical conclusion.  The conclusion being that
Keynes’ “guile” might include using Wittgenstein to promote a revised
version of the authoritarian position of St Augustine.

I am suggesting that Keynes’ position regarding the argument between
Pelagius (the excommunicated “heretic” - or alternatively - “Christian
Cicero”) and St Augustine, around 410 AD, was similar in important ways to
that held by his contemporary Collingwood – who wrote in his “Oxford History
of Roman Britain” (p. 309):

“The theological issue was at once simple and profound. Augustine was
teaching his doctrine of grace: how the power to do great things that flows
outward from the human will is a power not originating in that will itself,
but flowing through it, using it as vehicle and means of expression, its
source being God, and man's power being then greatest when he is most aware
of himself as the open channel through which God's power flows into the
world. Once in Rome, soon after Augustine's Confessions were published,
Pelagius was hearing them read aloud by a friend. He came to the words:
'Give what Thou commandest, and command what Thou wilt.' Pelagius, stirred
out of his usual calm, broke out, 'I cannot bear it.' To him, such mysticism
was the negation of human freedom, and a belief in it must sap the will to
self-discipline and self-improvement upon which alone man could base a
vigorous practical life. Yet Augustine, the fiery man of action, knew more
about the human will than Pelagius the reserved and dreaming wanderer. It
was the ineffective, unpractical man who insisted on the freedom of the
will; the strong man knew that such insistence was the unconscious betrayal
of inner weakness. Augustine was right: a determinism of the kind which he
preached is indispensable to sound ethical doctrine. Pelagius in opposing it
was expressing in terms of philosophical thought the same paralysis of will
that his countrymen were revealing in action: Augustine's thought, still
to-day dominating civilization like a colossus, expressed the demonic energy
of the early Christian mind, conscious of itself as drawing on stores of
energy that were not finite, like the human personality, but infinite.”

As a historian, Collingwood points to a contemporary collapse of
civilization in Britain (Romans left 410).  But as a historian he failed to
explain that radical followers of Pelagius had gone underground in Rome, and
were organizing street marches chanting “Tolle Divitem” (abolish the rich).
 Or that the excommunication of Pelagius prefigured a retreat from
civilization into a dark age that on some traditional accounts lasted almost
1000 years.

Evidence linking Keynes to such views is clearly required, but obviously
hard to pin down when he openly admits to “guile”.

For the link of Wittgenstein to Augustine I lodge this paper by Kremer

isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic1069749.../Kremer_ThePurpose.pdf

For Keynes’ anti-Pelagian attitude, I would ask readers to ponder why in
“Newton the Man” Keynes final judgement was that Newton was a “strange
spirit, who was tempted by the Devil”?  Newton held views exactly opposite
to Collingwood, as I read it, making such as Augustine responsible for the
destruction of Christian Morality.  Googling combinations of “Socinism”
“Newton” “Pelagius” I believe should be helpful in unravelling  this, I can
assist further on request.

Rob Tye, York, UK

PS  like Russell, I am a “Pelagian atheist”, in case anyone wonders.  

And of course I argue Wittgenstein presented himself as a sort of
“Augustinian atheist”.  Guile soon generates weird positions!