ABSTRACT
Keynes’s General Theory has given rise to a variety of Keynesian research programmes. The development of these different Keynesian research programmes is well documented (see e.g. Coddington 1976; Gerrard 1988; Hamouda and Harcourt 1988 for surveys of Keynesian and post-Keynesian economics). However, less attention has been paid to explaining a striking feature of this Keynesian diversity, namely, the stress placed on discovering the real meaning of Keynes’s General Theory. The legitimacy of any particular Keynesian research programme has been judged with regard to the authenticity of its implied interpretation of Keynes. Inevitably this concern for authenticity has generated much controversy, enveloping Keynesian economics in a ‘doctrinal fog’ (Blaug 1980:221). This chapter attempts to pierce that Keynesian doctrinal fog. The central thesis is that the causes of the controversy surrounding Keynes’s General Theory lie, in part, in the different presuppositions made about the nature of interpretation. It is argued that much light can be shed on the Keynesian debate by drawing on the study of hermeneutics.
