52 pages • 1 hour read
Robert HeilbronerThe Worldly Philosophers
Nonfiction | Biography | Adult | Published in 1953A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 1-2Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary: “Introduction”
Economics, rather than being cold, difficult, and abstract, is exciting, dangerous, and given to world-changing impact. Heilbroner writes not about economists who made history-changing decisions but those who shaped and swayed people’s minds. He argues that heretical economic opinions that evolved into common sense built the whole intellectual architecture of modern life, exposing much of what was once considered economic common sense as baseless superstition.
The economists that Heilbroner discusses could not be more varied; they came from every nationality and family background and had opposing opinions on almost every topic, but they were united by one thing: curiosity. “They were all fascinated by the world around them, by its complexity and its seeming disorder, by the cruelty that it so often masked in sanctimony and the success of which it was equally often unawares” (16). Thus, Heilbroner calls these economists “the worldly philosophers” because they sought to understand humanity’s most worldly activity: the pursuit of wealth. Their search for the order and meaning of social history forms both the heart of economics and the book’s central theme.
Even though humanity always struggled with economic problems—distribution of wealth, acquisition of resources, etc.—the first economist of note, Adam Smith, didn’t live until the time of the American Revolution. In earlier periods, the economist was not only unnecessary but impossible; this understanding explains why no great economists preceded Smith and sets the stage for the 300 years that followed.
Chapter 2 Summary: “The Economic Revolution”
Humanity has always faced the problem of survival, not only individually but also as a whole. Our continued existence proves that humans somewhat manage the problem, balancing the contradiction between our self-centered nature and the social cooperation necessary for survival, but misery and want continue to exist.
Depending on a society’s evolutionary state, different factors contribute to the balance: in primitive societies, the specter of starvation; in developing societies, the norms of kinship and reciprocity. In advanced societies, neither scarcity nor social obligations exist: When few work tasks relate directly to survival, “the perpetuation of the human animal becomes a remarkable social feat” (19). Throughout history, people have guarded against annihilation by implementing three main societal frameworks: those based on tradition, on command, or on the free market. In societies organized around tradition, generations pass down necessary tasks from one to the next. In command societies, authoritarian leaders force their subjects complete the necessary tasks for survival under threat of punishment.
Economists, beginning with Smith, only emerged alongside the third framework: the market system. Under a market system, people do as they see fit, so long as they follow a central guiding rule: Each person makes decisions that contribute to their own monetary advantage. The market system, with each person seeking individual gain, did not guarantee survival or the completion of tasks. Economists came forward to explain this puzzle; until the idea of the market system took hold, there was no puzzle to explain, and no need for economists.
Individual markets have always existed, but “we must not make the mistake of assuming that all the world has the bargaining propensities of a modern-day American schoolboy” (26-27). The market system, unlike the individual market for exchanging goods, became a mechanism for sustaining an entire society. Until the 17th century, land, labor, and capital—the basic agents of production that the market system allocates— did not exist as impersonal, abstract economic entities. Thus, the medieval world couldn’t conceive of the market system because it could not conceive of the abstract elements of production; therefore, society ran by tradition and command. The self-reproducing, self-sufficient free-for-all of the market system—and the economists who needed to explain it—emerged in the 18th century. This evolution was not peaceful: “It was an agonized convulsion of a society, a revolution” (30). Though bitterly resisted, unstoppable market-making forces ripped apart custom and tradition.
No single cause upended the old world and put in place the new, unwanted market system; rather, it resulted from multiple, many-faceted changes. First, just as isolated early feudalism had given way to centralized monarchies that encouraged national spirit and enacted common national laws, national political units that displaced or superseded traditional monarchies began to emerge in Europe. Second, the skeptical humanist views of the Italian Renaissance, as well as Protestantism’s favorable attitudes towards work and wealth, contributed to the slow decay of traditional religious views. Third, towns, and the roads that connected them with each other and with farmers in the countryside, led to more familiarity with the buying and selling way of life. Fourth, increased scientific inquiry made experimentation and innovation more favorable. The Industrial Revolution could not have happened without innovations such as the printing press, the paper mill, the windmill, the mechanical clock, and the map.
By 1700, the idea of the “economic man” who organized his affairs around personal gain came into being. The free action of profit-seeking individuals bound together only by the market would determine survival. This new system needed a philosophy because man cannot let things be: “He must tell himself that the particular society in which he lives is the best of all possible societies” (38). These philosophers wanted to keep the working class poor, because otherwise they would expect exorbitant wages in exchange for a day’s work. Many contradictory theories wrestled to explain society, poverty, and the source of national wealth.
Out of this debate came Adam Smith, who published his Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations in 1776. This book made sense of the market system and allowed people to see how their daily tasks fit within a society that was proceeding towards an abstract yet visible goal.
Chapters 1-2 Analysis
The first section introduces the major themes and questions that Heilbroner will return to throughout his examination of the worldly philosophers, who were economists that sought to understand the worldliest of activities—the acquisition of wealth—within the context of both social history, and what future societies will look like. When other great thinkers tried to understand humanity, they focused on ethics and philosophy: who humans are, the nature of existence, the definition of morality. The worldly philosophers explored the nature of society through the material sphere of economics: what drives people to acquire resources, and how that drive shapes the world in which they love—specifically, in the creation of the free market and its consequences.
In Chapter 1, Heilbroner offers a streamlined explanation of the sociopolitical environment in which modern economic systems developed. Throughout the rest of the book, he will explain the specific sociopolitical environments in which each economic philosopher lived and, in turn, the impact each philosopher had on their world. Consider the 21st century: Behavioral economists like Daniel Ariely now interpret economics hand in hand with psychology, sociology, and neuroscience. The more advanced those fields become, the more economists question Adam Smith’s notions that people, in the acquisition of wealth, operate both rationally and in their best interest. Ariely’s writing today affects people operating in fields as diverse as psychology and marketing; he both shapes his world and is shaped by it—just as Adam Smith shaped and was shaped by the 18th-century world he inhabited.
Economics is as much a philosophy as a set of formulas: Heilbroner wants readers to understand the reasoning behind economics, not just to memorize mathematical explanations of how economies work. Given its mathematical and inductive nature, economics has acquired a reputation for difficulty—something best left to the experts. Heilbroner argues that everyone should understand the core arguments made by the great economic thinkers; they’re as much a key to understanding western civilization as the philosophies of Plato or Descartes.
Heilbroner’s second argument is that economics, as a field, did not exist before Adam Smith. Though people have always had to acquire resources to survive, for most of human history, tradition or command systems determined how society allocated resources. With the emergence of the free market system, or capitalism, it was no longer obvious how society would survive when everyone followed their own rational self-interest. Thus, a specialized subfield for examining the inner workings of the market system became necessary, and economics, with the publication of The Wealth of Nations, was born.
Although the differences between the worldly philosophers are many, certain elements unite them: their attempts to understand how society’s needs get met, their goal of understanding the dynamics of the market system, their efforts to predict what will happen to society in the future, and their attempts to clarify, illuminate, and interpret economics.
