Curated playlist
Philosophers of economics
- Thomas AquinasThomas Aquinas's family held him prisoner for nearly a year. At nineteen he chose to join the Dominican preachers.
- Jean-Jacques RousseauRousseau refused a king's pension after Louis XV loved his opera. Friends were exasperated by his choice.
- Karl MarxKarl Marx left an estate valued at just 250 pounds when he died in 1883. He died stateless in London at 64.
- Ezra PoundEzra Pound cut T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land by about half. Eliot called the edits proof of Pound's critical genius.
- Adam SmithAdam Smith once walked straight into a tanning pit while talking about free trade.
- Noam ChomskyNoam Chomsky wrote his first article at age 10, about the fall of Barcelona.
- John Stuart MillJohn Stuart Mill was reading Greek at age three. His father was deliberately raising a genius.
- Pierre-Joseph ProudhonPierre-Joseph Proudhon was the first person known to call himself an anarchist, and many consider him the father of anarchism. He reached that title through the printing trade, having taught himself Latin so that he could print books in…
- Herbert SpencerIn 1937 the American sociologist Talcott Parsons asked a pointed question about Herbert Spencer: "Who now reads Spencer?" The question carried a sting. Spencer had once been called "the single most famous European intellectual in the…
- Gilles DeleuzeGilles Deleuze never trimmed his fingernails. He once explained that he lacked "normal protective fingerprints", and so could not "touch an object, particularly a piece of cloth, with the pads of my fingers without sharp pain". It is a…
- Friedrich EngelsFriedrich Engels rode with an aristocratic fox hunt while funding Karl Marx.
- Max WeberMax Weber died in 1920 with his major book unfinished on his desk. His widow spent two years preparing it.
- Mikhail BakuninKarl Marx had the anarchist Mikhail Bakunin expelled from the First International in 1872.
- Edmund BurkeOn the 28th of December 1792, Edmund Burke rose to speak in the House of Commons during the debate on the Aliens Bill. He pulled a concealed dagger from his coat and threw it to the floor. France, he said, had placed an order for 3,000…
- Ibn KhaldunIn 1400, the historian Ibn Khaldun was lowered by ropes over Damascus's wall to meet the conqueror Timur.
- Alexander HerzenFor three years, Alexander Herzen's Russian press in London did not sell a single copy.
- Karl PopperSir Karl Raimund Popper was born in Vienna on the 28th of July 1902 and died on the 17th of September 1994. In between, he built a philosophy of science on an odd idea. The strongest theories, he argued, are the ones most exposed to being…
- Robert ReichRobert Reich stands 4 feet 11 inches tall, and he has spent his working life arguing with people who hold far more power than he does. Born on the 24th of June 1946, he became an American lawyer, professor, author and political…