This book is a study of the intellectual foundations of Alfred Marshall's economic science. It makes no attempt to evaluate Marshall's contributions to economic science by the lights of current economic thinking. Nor is it conceived as a step toward the reformation of contemporary economic theory, showing what one of its founders “really meant.” Even the most historically minded of contemporary neo-Marshallian economists are likely to find this study “backward looking,” with little connection to contemporary research. Yet these disclaimers are not intended to justify a study of ‘ideas for ideas’ sake. “We need history,” Nietzsche once wrote, “but not the way a spoiled loafer in the garden of knowledge needs it.” Intellectual history can, on occasion, lead us not only to the roots of our present beliefs, but also to fresh perspectives on current problems. But the contemporary problems that this book points toward are not specifically economic ones. They relate rather to the connection between our economic reasoning as a whole and our various political, moral, and cultural values; for the primary concern of the following chapters is not the development of Marshall's economic thought as such, but the intimate and intricate connections that can be traced between his work in political economy and the development of his philosophical thinking.

Marshall's earliest philosophical writings date to the late 1860s, when he first became associated with the moral sciences as taught and developed at the University of Cambridge.