The Rhetoric of McCloskey's Rhetoric of Economics

Michael Stettler

Cambridge Journal of Economics, 1995, vol. 19, issue 3, 391-403

Abstract: D. McCloskey's project of a rhetoric of economics contains a rejection of traditional epistemology in favor of a form of pragmatism. He uses, however, 'effective persuasion' and 'community' as surrogates for the epistemologist's 'method' and 'truth.' Equipped with these surrogates, he declares the good health of economics. At the heart of his argument is an analogy according to which discourse in economics is like a market for ideas. That analogy justifies established paradigms despite the rejection of their methodological underpinnings. This paper analyzes McCloskey's own rhetoric in his defense of the intellectual direction taken by economics. (c) 1995 Academic Press, Inc. Copyright 1995 by Oxford University Press.

Date: 1995
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