Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on contributors
- Preface
- 1 The effects of a broken home: Bertrand Russell and Cambridge
- 2 I. A. Richards, F. R. Leavis and Cambridge English
- 3 Emily Davies, the Sidgwicks and the education of women in Cambridge
- 4 Radioastronomy in Cambridge
- 5 Three Cambridge prehistorians
- 6 John Maynard Keynes
- 7 Mathematics in Cambridge and beyond
- 8 James Stuart: engineering, philanthropy and radical politics
- 9 The Darwins in Cambridge
- 10 How the Burgess Shale came to Cambridge; and what happened
- 11 Ludwig Wittgenstein
- 12 ‘Brains in their fingertips’: physics at the Cavendish Laboratory 1880–1940
- 13 J. N. Figgis and the history of political thought in Cambridge
- 14 Molecular biology in Cambridge
- 15 James Frazer and Cambridge anthropology
- 16 Michael Oakeshott
6 - John Maynard Keynes
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 October 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on contributors
- Preface
- 1 The effects of a broken home: Bertrand Russell and Cambridge
- 2 I. A. Richards, F. R. Leavis and Cambridge English
- 3 Emily Davies, the Sidgwicks and the education of women in Cambridge
- 4 Radioastronomy in Cambridge
- 5 Three Cambridge prehistorians
- 6 John Maynard Keynes
- 7 Mathematics in Cambridge and beyond
- 8 James Stuart: engineering, philanthropy and radical politics
- 9 The Darwins in Cambridge
- 10 How the Burgess Shale came to Cambridge; and what happened
- 11 Ludwig Wittgenstein
- 12 ‘Brains in their fingertips’: physics at the Cavendish Laboratory 1880–1940
- 13 J. N. Figgis and the history of political thought in Cambridge
- 14 Molecular biology in Cambridge
- 15 James Frazer and Cambridge anthropology
- 16 Michael Oakeshott
Summary
The obituarist of The Times of London wrote on 22 April 1946:
Lord Keynes, the great economist, died at Tilton, Firle, Sussex, yesterday from a heart attack.
By his death, the country has lost a very great Englishman.
This is a faultless judgement: Keynes was a ‘great economist’, arguably the greatest of the twentieth century, and he was, indisputably, ‘a very great Englishman’. In order to have a proper perspective on his life, his economics and his contributions generally, these attributes have always to be remembered. Keynes was a proper patriot. He was as aware of the faults of his fellow citizens as he was of their virtues; but he always attempted to devise policies and to design institutions which would enable them, if they so wished, to be able to live better, while at the same time fitting his and their society into an international order in which there could be desirable outcomes for all. Even more important, we should remember that Keynes's own life was an example of a person who was wrestling unceasingly but increasingly optimistically with the Moorean problem: Is it possible both to be good and to do good?
In the end Keynes literally killed himself for his country and for the wider international community.
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- Cambridge Minds , pp. 72 - 85Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1994
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