This is not a brief for one kind of intellectual history over another, but a reflection on the advantages offered by each. The approaches are not antithetical and most works of intellectual history, including Carter’s, combine elements of both. Indeed, I would describe Carter’s perspective as radical in its willingness to challenge orthodoxies and in its reminder of the fundamentally democratic message at the heart of Keynesian vision, which is the belief that we as citizens can, with the proper conceptual tools, both analyze the world and remake it too. What I calling vertical and horizontal approaches to history can take many forms and have no simple political valence. Nor am I suggesting that one approach is more radical than the other. But they are not identical because a “top down” history can also be vertical in that it can explore many different strata rather than keep its gaze fixed only at one, which is a characteristic of the horizontal approach. The differences between what I am calling vertical and horizontal history may seem to resemble those between “top down” and “bottom up” approaches. Versions of some of Keynes’s key insights, taken to be original and even revolutionary, in the world of professional economics and public policy, can be found in circles that Keynes did not know about or take seriously, such as nineteenth century labor reformers or abolitionists. Such an approach might explore not only those influences but things that Keynes didn’t notice because they lay outside his field of vision. The approach is horizontal in examining the wide range of influences that shaped Keynes’s life and thought, and, also, showing, in turn, how that thought has shaped politics and policy.īy a vertical approach I mean, in contrast, an approach that not only looks across for context but above, below, and outside of these circles as well. So, we get a deep dive into his economic thought that is deeply contextualized by his life experiences and influences, and a persuasive argument that economics and politics cannot be separated. But he shows that Keynes’ ambitions were grander and that his intellectual biography requires taking all of these into account. ![]() A veteran financial journalist unintimidated by math, Carter does a superb job of analyzing Keynes’ technical and political writings and his analysis of them is probing, comprehensive, and, at times, critical. I take Carter’s approach to be horizonal, by which I mean that he argues persuasively that we should understand Keynes as an intellectual, not merely an economist, with deep interests in art, philosophy, and politics, all of which he traces with great sympathy and skill. In describing vertical approaches, I draw mostly on my own research, not because I think I am the only scholar who has done such work but because the examples I draw upon illustrate how a different approach might lead us to rethink Keynes’s conception of how ideas shape history. I hope this piece generates further elaboration of the differences or even a reasoned rejection of the framework I put forward. My reflections here are tentative and schematic, with the recognition that these terms don’t perfectly capture the differences that I seek to explore. Instead, it is an exploration of what I will call “horizontal” and “vertical” approaches in intellectual history. This is not a comprehensive review of the book. Carter’s terrific new study, The Price of Peace: Money, Democracy and the Life of John Maynard Keynes, offers an excellent starting off point for thinking about varieties of intellectual history. He is a part of Cornell’s History of Capitalism Initiative. He writes frequently for the public in Boston Review, the Washington Post, the Atlantic, Dissent, and other publications. ![]() He is the author or editor of five books, including, most recently, Free Enterprise: An American History (Yale University Press, 2019). Glickman is the Stephen and Evalyn Millman Professor of American Studies in the Department of History at Cornell University. We are pleased to offer our readers this guest essay by Lawrence Glickman.
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