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Copyright © Cambridge Political Economy Society

research-article

The rhetoric of McCloskey's rhetoric of economics

Michael Stettler*

*University of Witwatersrand South Africa

Abstract

McCloskey's project of a rhetoric of economics contains a rejection of traditional epistemology in favour 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. The paper analyses McCloskey's own rhetoric in his defence of the intellectual direction taken by economics.

Manuscript received October 28, 1991; final version received August 18, 1993.


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