The Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics for an Age of Commerce

the myth of modern rationality 441P, too. Add it to the equation. But Schultz did not ignore the S variables. Theeducation of women, he argued forcefully, was crucial in making Prudencework, and the education would depend on overcoming sacred patriarchalobjections to literate women. He got the evidence.Many economists go through a Bildung of this sort, starting in graduateschool as P-Only guys—the guys more than the gals, since most of the galshad this figured out sometime before age eight—and coming by age fifty orso to realize that, after all, people are in fact motivated by more than Prudence.I did, for one. And Robert Fogel (born 1926; Nobel 1993) started inhis youth, like me, as a P-Only Marxist, then became, like me, a P-Onlyeconomist, and finally discovered, like me, the force of religion in economicbehavior. Even Gary Becker (born 1930; Nobel 1992) shows signs of such adevelopment, in seeing that bourgeois virtues are not a betrayal of the scienceof economics.