ABSTRACT
Interest in the philosophical foundations of Keynes’ thought has been developed along two distinct lines. Initially, we saw the emergence of broad accounts of the philosophical foundations of Keynes’ thought built upon his 1921 A Treatise on Probability. We should mention here the pioneer works of Meeks, Carabelli, O’Donnell and Lawson scrutinising the influence of Cambridge analytical philosophers, in particular that of G.E.Moore, on Keynes’ earlier intuitionist ethics. Subsequently, investigations such as those of Coates, Cottrell, Skidelsky and Davis, have stressed Keynes’ acceptance of Wittgenstein’s later philosophy and challenged the assertion that Keynes’ early philosophical ideas would have slipped without any friction into his economic thinking. It is within this context that we shall frame and assess the argument developed in John Coates’ book The Claims of Common Sense (1996), in particular the claim that Keynes would have formulated an ‘ordinary language economies’. We argue that, although this book is relevant in that it addresses an important issue and inspires a constructive critical reaction, the cogency of the basic arguments it proposes might be called into question. Ordinary language philosophy is not, as proposed by Coates, the central point of Keynes’ economics. The foundation of Keynes’ economics is his own common-sense philosophy resulting from his belonging to the Marshallian tradition and practising as an economist, influenced but not compelled by external philosophical conundrums. Coates’ argument is certainly an important contribution to the literature emphasising Wittgenstein’s influence on Keynes’ philosophical development. However, Coates’ analysis could be extended to a position more illuminating and useful for the methodology of economics if, by reorganising the theoretical elements he provides, we could set out a defence of Keynes’ common-sense economics.
