----------------- HES POSTING ----------------- I have followed the discussion about the appropriate place for graduate training in the history of economics with a great deal of interest. One common assumption in the current discussion is that the history of economics (and/or political economy) only belongs to the discipline now known as "economics"--even if one accepts or advocates that it can be best studied with the tools acquired in a history of science or intellectual history program and one accepts that these programs also offer access to training in the sometimes rather technical mathematical and conceptual apparatus that enable genuine understanding of the subject matter studied. (I do worry that some of the leading practitioners of "thick" history of science outside of history of economics that Roy seems to admire so much sometimes don't understand the conceptual and mathematical structure of the science they are talking about. One thing I have found refreshing about the history of economics is that there is a very high level of technical competency.) But the history of economics also belongs to the disciplinary history of "philosophy." That is to say, there are important philosophers (Hume, Marx, Mill, Bentham) whose "philosophy" one cannot fully understand without serious reflection on their "economics" and some others (Locke, Rousseau, Aquinas) where neglect of the "economics" at least offers some impoverishment of one's understanding of their philosophy. (Among trained philosophers, I am still idiosyncratic in thinking that Adam Smith is also a genuinely interesting philosopher-- even in metaphysics and epistemology.) I don't this is just a historical artifact; it's clear to me that important, live branches of philosophy (decision theory, game theory, inductive logic, etc.) are also practiced by philosophers/economists. Unlike perhaps economics or other sciences (progressing/narrowing or not), for many in philosophy the historical tradition is more than a mere expansion of the literature review or a source for interesting answers/arguments to our problems. While philosophy is not, I hope, about appeals to authority, it is, for some of us, about serious critical engagement with thinkers who can inspire us to re-think our philosophic activities. My own engagement as a historian of philosophy (sometimes including the history of economics), while mindful to both the concerns that drive "thick" history as well as fascinated by the clarity that some rational or anachronistic reconstruction can provide, is guided by my hope that serious engagement (scholarly or not) with the history of philosophy makes me a better and more interesting philosopher that can speak to a serious contemporary, philosophic audience. Michael Friedman's work on Kant, or Howard Stein's on Newton are useful exemplars to me. (A lot of contemporary virtue ethics has gained from engagement with Aristotle.) That is to say, those of us who resist the idea that philosophy is only about "solving problems" can find engagement with our tradition, which often involves a reformulation of who should be in or out of that tradition, quite fruitful. Anyway, the history of economics that is produced by people trained in economics departments and that is informed by such a training can be quite stimulating and illuminating on many levels. It would be sad if that were to disappear entirely. That is for the economics profession to decide. But I won't cede the history of economics only to the historians. Cheers! Eric ------------ FOOTER TO HES POSTING ------------ For information, send the message "info HES" to [log in to unmask]