Keynes the Man.pdf - The Ludwig von Mises Institute

Murray N. Rothbard 21aspect of Keynes’s personality, was only an adolescent phase,quickly outgrown by his hero.But many other aspects of his career and thought confirmKeynes’s lifelong immoralism and disdain for the bourgeoisie.Moreover, in his 1938 paper, delivered at the age of 55, Keynesconfirmed his continuing adherence to his early views, stating thatimmoralism is “still my religion under the surface. … I remainand always will remain an immoralist” (Harrod 1951, pp. 76–81;Skidelsky 1983, pp. 145–46; Welch 1986, p. 43).In a notable contribution, Skidelsky demonstrates that Keynes’sfirst important scholarly book, A Treatise on Probability (1921),was not unrelated to the rest of his concerns. It grew out of hisattempt to copper rivet his rejection of Moore’s proposed generalrules of morality. The beginnings of the Treatise came in a paper,which Keynes read to the Apostles in January 1904, on Moore’sspurned chapter, “Ethics in Relation to Conduct.” Refuting Mooreon probability occupied Keynes’s scholarly thoughts from thebeginning of 1904 until 1914, when the manuscript of the Treatisewas completed.He concluded that Moore was able to impose general rulesupon concrete actions by employing an empirical or “frequentist”theory of probability, that is, through observation of empiricalfrequencies we could have certain knowledge of the probabilitiesof classes of events. To destroy any possibility of applying generalrules to particular cases, Keynes’s Treatise championed the classicala priori theory of probability, where probability fractions arededuced purely by logic and have nothing to do with empiricalreality. Skidelsky makes the point well:Keynes’s argument, then, can be interpreted as an attempt tofree the individual to pursue the good … by means of egotisticactions, since he is not required to have certain knowledge ofthe probable consequences of his actions in order to act rationally.It is part, in other words, of his continuing campaignagainst Christian morality. This would have been appreciated