Imagining Interest in Political Thought: Origins of Economic Rationality

Extract

Imagining Interest in Political Thought: Origins of Economic Rationality, Stephen G. Engelmann, Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2003, pp. x, 194

This always fascinating but sometimes frustrating volume undertakes to trace the natural history of what its author calls neo-liberalism, meaning the kind of economic analysis and approach to governance practiced by such denizens of the Chicago school as Nobel Prize winner Gary Becker and appeals court Justice Richard Posner. A professor at the University of Illinois in Chicago, Engelmann contends that this mode of analysis grew out of a way of thinking that was brought to maturity by Jeremy Bentham but had already begun to take root in Cromwell's England.