Keynes's Message, Method and Language in the Works of Fausto Vicarelli

This essay examines Keynes’s theoretical message, method and language, and traces their presence in the works of Fausto Vicarelli and in his intellectual legacy. Since the 1930s, following Keynes, the explanatory core of the business cycle has been located in the instability of the saving–investment relationship. Keynes regarded economics as a branch of logic rather than of mathematics — a way of thinking, not a pseudo-natural science. He did not write in the esoteric jargon of mathematicians addressed to a few colleagues; he used instead the language of those whose understanding and support were necessary for policy intervention. Following Keynes, Vicarelli stressed that economics is not an isolated body of knowledge but one inseparable from philosophy, psychology, history and politics. For him, economics was an important scientific discipline, yet unable, by itself, to capture the essence of human social behaviour.