Edward Skidelsky

He lived, he worked, he died.” Heidegger’s famously terse summary of Aristotle’s life expresses one common view of the project of intellectual biography. An opposed view holds that every thinker’s work is a disguised confession—a translation into the abstract language of thought, of . . . . Continue Reading »

Economists make a point of speaking in conditionals, not categoricals. They never just say: “Do this!” They say: “Do this, if you want that. If these are your ends, this is what you must do to secure them. As for those ends themselves, they’re up to you.” This modesty is, paradoxically, . . . . Continue Reading »

Defending the Free Market: The Moral Case for a Free Economy by Robert A. Sirico Regnery, 256 pages, $27.95 The Catholic Church, at its best, has preserved a rare freedom from political fashion. It has allied itself now with the left, now with the right, as its own doctrine and interests have . . . . Continue Reading »

The last few years have seen a surprising revival of the term “greed.” For many decades, the free-market right saw no harm in people making as much money as they could, while the left spoke only of inequality and injustice, both directing their economic attention to accumulation or distribution . . . . Continue Reading »