G. L. S. Shackle’s Place in the History of Subjectivist Thought

Abstract

Most of us are familiar with an experience that, baffling and discouraging as it is in the narrower context of expounding subjectivist doctrine, points to the existence of a deeper problem pertaining to the way in which economists understand their own role. The experience is this: having referred a friend or student to Shackle’s work, one is told after a time that, gratifying and exciting as the experience was, the reader found it hard to see what all this had to do with the daily concerns of economists.