The Religion of a Skeptic: Frank H. Knight on Ethics, Spirituality, and Religion during His Iowa Years

Ross Emmett

History of Political Economy, 2008, vol. 40, issue 5, 315-337

Abstract: Frank H. Knight's antagonism to religion is well known and features prominently in his writings from the 1930s on. But during the 1920s, when he was a professor at the University of Iowa and wrote some of his most important essays on the limitations of economics, Knight was an active participant in the Iowa City Unitarian Church. Drawing on research about his association with the Unitarian Church, and his unpublished writings from the period on religion, economics, and social organization, the essay argues that the Unitarian association provided a community open to discussing the multidimensionality of human experience, which assisted Knight in his investigation of ethics, economics, science, and liberal democracy. In the end, however, his association with the Unitarians ceased when he moved back to the University of Chicago in 1928.

Keywords: Frank H. Knight; University of Iowa; unitarian (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008
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