Event
Humane True Liberalism
220 South 34th Street, Philadelphia
The Philosophy, Politics, and Economics Program presents the 19th Annual Goldstone Forum
Are capitalism, globalization, and the middle class good for society? Known internationally for her Bourgeois book series, economist, historian, and critic Deirdre McCloskey will explore this question and others.
In the first book in the series, The Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics for an Age of Commerce, McCloskey takes a closer look at the world after the Industrial Revolution, finding that during this period the bourgeoisie believed in virtues beyond its self-advertised faith in prudence. Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics Can't Explain the Modern World argues that the unprecedented increase in human welfare of the 19th and 20th centuries, from three dollars per capita per day to over 100 dollars per day, issued not from capitalist accumulation but from innovation. In Bourgeois Equality: How Ideas, Not Capital or Institutions, Enriched the World, McCloskey concludes by coining the term "Great Enrichment" to describe the unprecedented gains in human welfare of the 19th and 20th centuries.
Deirdre McCloskey is UIC Distinguished Professor of Economics, History, English, and Communication at the University of Illinois at Chicago. A well-known economist and historian, she has written 16 books and has published over around 400 scholarly articles on topics ranging from economic theory, economic history, philosophy, rhetoric, feminism, ethics, transgender advocacy, and law. Her next book, on humane liberalism, is due in 2020.
For more information about Deirdre McCloskey, please visit www.deirdremccloskey.com/.
The Goldstone Forum is made possible by Steven F. Goldstone, former chairman of Nabisco Group Holdings and Penn graduate (C '67) in Political Science. The Goldstone Fund, created from his gift to the PPE program at Penn, supports endowed postdoctoral fellowships, underwrites visiting lecturers and conferences, aids PPE majors conducting research for their Capstone seminars, and provides funds for SPICE, the PPE undergraduate journal.