Laudatio Deirdre McCloskey

Laudatio for Deirdre McCloskey by proximus Luc Hens

Deirdre McCloskey’s magnum opus is the Bourgeois Era trilogy. One can think of the trilogy as a reassessment of Adam Smith's work – Adam Smith who is best known for his Wealth of Nations, which was published in 1776. About 20 years before that he published another work called The Theory of Moral Sentiments and what Deirdre McCloskey tries to do is to link virtue ethics – the virtue ethics of The Theory of Moral Sentiments – to the great enrichment: the fact that over the last 300 years or so the wealth of people increased by a factor 10 to 30, depending on where the people live. McCloskey's argument is that not capitalism, not innovation, not institutions were essential for this great enrichment, but it was virtue ethics. It was the fact that the conversation about values actually changed and the bourgeois values – the seven bourgeois values – came to the forefront: temperance and prudence, courage and justice, love, hope and faith. And the argument goes further actually: Deirdre McCloskey argues that capitalism actually reinforces those virtues, that it makes people better people. Those two elements actually lead to a virtuous cycle in which the virtues reinforce growth and growth reinforces the virtues, so economics is not a value-free science, but the values actually play an essential role in economic growth.

My first encounter with Deidre – then still Donald – McCloskey's work was when I had to teach a research seminar to undergraduate students who were struggling to write clearly and concisely. That's how I came across this essay that Deirdre published – an essay called Economical Writing – that lays out the do's and don'ts of good economic writing. I've been using the little book since, both for myself and for my thesis students. The work by McCloskey on writing is related to what she did on economic rhetoric – rhetoric in the sense of unforced persuasion of people – in which she explains that economics, like other human sciences, is an art of storytelling, of using metaphors to make a certain point.

I'm very proud that Deirdre McCloskey, who broke down so many walls – walls between genders, walls between different fields of science – was willing to accept the title of doctor honoris causa of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel.