ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the scholarly conversations in response to McCloskey's ethical theses as well as her most recent efforts toward a humanist economics. "The chief way that a rhetorical economics would differ from the present economics, to repeat, is that it would face the arguments." Most of the immediate response to McCloskey's work focused on the methodological thesis, ignoring her analyses altogether. Rhetorical economics belongs in the "traditions" section of this collection for two reasons. First, for three decades, scholars have used rhetoric to rethink their methodological presumptions, their disciplinary formation, and their discursive constitution. Second, McCloskey's humanomics revives a much older and nowadays "neglected link between the economy and culture," a conversation that began with Adam Smith, a tradition featuring the mathematician's models as well as "the anthropologist's and the aesthete's sense." McCloskey's humanomics anticipates a new scholarly era and respects a long-standing tradition.
