Pace the Person: Toward an Ethos of Charity in the History of Economic Thought

The history of economic thought deals with theories conceived by thinkers from the past. A scholarly analysis aimed at understanding and evaluating such theories will have to take the entanglement into account that inevitably exists between an author's work, the person, and the era. But where to draw the line between the relevant and the irrelevant aspects of an author's persona? And what attitude to adopt so as to enhance understanding and reach a scientifically defensible evaluation, at a safe distance from myths or slurs? In this paper, I showcase some intuitively bad examples and, against their background, I develop a set of deontological signposts for the scholar in the history of economic thought – signposts that may in fact be part of an ethos for any hermeneutic endeavor when it comes to dealing with information about the private person behind a work. At its core, I argue, stands charity: for both epistemological and ethical reasons.