BiblioVault - Books by Levy, David

David J. Levy

University of Missouri Press

Hans Jonas: The Integrity of Thinking provides the first overall account of the work of Hans Jonas. While Jonas is not the best-known thinker of the twentieth century, David J. Levy shows that he is one of the most important. Levy covers the philosopher’s life and his contributions to the history of religion, philosophical biology, philosophical anthropology, ethics, and theology. Jonas’s work is situated in relationship to that of his first intellectual mentor, Martin Heidegger, as well as that of such related thinkers among his contemporaries as Eric Voegelin.

Setting Jonas’s work in the historical and philosophical context of his life and times, Levy summarizes Jonas’s original achievements in fields as apparently diverse as the history of ancient Gnosticism, the philosophical significance of biology, the problems of ethics in a technological age, and the mysteries of theology, while demonstrating the notable unity of theme and purpose that guided his various fields of inquiry.

Jonas’s work will become increasingly significant in the years ahead as we face the problems produced by current developments in technology such as biological engineering. Such issues were of particular interest for him, and he was unique among his philosophical contemporaries in devoting attention to them. His eloquent writings on these themes bring wisdom and common sense anchored in Jonas’s own historical and biographical experience of the fragility of human life and the common good. Having begun his academic life in Germany between the world wars, he later served in the British army throughout the struggle against Hitler and lost his mother at Auschwitz.

Unlike the scattered works, anthologies, and essays that are currently available, Hans Jonas: The Integrity of Thinking provides a much-needed single, coherent overview of the various fields to which Jonas’s attention was drawn, bringing out the unified, systematic quality of Jonas’s philosophical approach.

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Gray Love

Stories About Dating and New Relationships After 60

nan Bauer-Maglin

Rutgers University Press, 2023

Gray Love narrates stories about the most common themes – searching for and (perhaps) finding love. Forty-five men and women between ages 60 and 94 from diverse backgrounds talk about dating, starting or ending a relationship, embracing life alone or enjoying a partnered one. The longing for connection as old age encroaches is palpable here, with more and more senior singles searching online. Those who find new partners explore issues that most relationships encounter at any age, as well as some that are unique to elder relationships. These include having had previous partners and a complicated and deep personal history; family and friends’ reactions to an older person’s dating; alternative models to marriage (such as sharing space or living apart); having more than one partner at the same time; one’s aging body, appearance, and sexuality; and the pressure of time and the specter of illness and death.

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How the Dismal Science Got Its Name

Classical Economics and the Ur-Text of Racial Politics

David M. Levy

University of Michigan Press, 2002

It is widely asserted that the Victorian sages attacked classical economics from a humanistic or egalitarian perspective, calling it "the dismal science," and that their attack is relevant to modern discussions of market society. David M. Levy here demonstrates that these assertions are simply false: political economy became "dismal" because Carlyle, Ruskin, and Dickens were horrified at the idea that systems of slavery were being replaced by systems in which individuals were allowed to choose their own paths in life. At a minimum, they argued, "we" white people ought to be directing the lives of "them," people of color.
Economists of the time argued, on the other hand, that people of color were to be protected by the rule of law--hence the moniker "the dismal science."
A startling image from 1893, which is reproduced in full color on this book's jacket, shows Ruskin killing someone who appears to be nonwhite. A close look reveals that the victim is reading "The Dismal Science."
Levy discusses this image at length and also includes in his text weblinks to Carlyle's "Occasional Discourse on the Negro Question" and to Mill's response, demonstrating that these are central documents in British classical economics. He explains Adam Smith's egalitarian foundations, contrasting Smith's approach to the hierarchical alternative proposed by Carlyle. Levy also examines various visual representations of this debate and provides an illuminating discussion of Smith's "katallactics," the science of exchange, comparing it with the foundations of modern neoclassical economics.
How the Dismal Science Got Its Name also introduces the notion of "rational choice scholarship" to explain how attacks on market economics from a context in which racial slavery was idealized have been interpreted as attacks on market economics from a humanistic or egalitarian context. Thus it will greatly appeal to economists, political scientists, philosophers, students of Victorian literature, and historians.
David M. Levy is Associate Professor of Economics and Research Associate, Center for Study of Public Choice, George Mason University.

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The Street Porter and the Philosopher

Conversations on Analytical Egalitarianism

Sandra J. Peart and David M. Levy, editors

University of Michigan Press, 2009

Adam Smith, asserting the common humanity of the street porter and the philosopher, articulated the classical economists' model of social interactions as exchanges among equals. This model had largely fallen out of favor until, recently, a number of scholars in the avant-garde of economic thought rediscovered it and rechristened it "analytical egalitarianism." In this volume, Sandra J. Peart and David M. Levy bring together an impressive array of authors to explore the ramifications of this analytical ideal and to discuss the ways in which an egalitarian theory of individuality can enable economists to reconcile ideas from opposite ends of the political spectrum.

"The analytical egalitarianism project that Peart and Levy have advanced has come to occupy a prominent place in the current agenda of historians of economic thought."
---Ross Emmett, Associate Professor of Economics and Co-Director of the Michigan Center for Innovation and Economic Prosperity, Michigan State University

"These essays and dialogs from the Summer Institute would make Adam Smith, economist and moral philosopher, proud."
---J. Daniel Hammond, Hultquist Family Professor of Economics, Wake Forest University

With essays by:

James M. Buchanan, Alfred Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences recipient (1985) and Professor Emeritus, George Mason University and Virginia Polytechnic and State University
Juan Pablo Couyoumdijian, Universidad del Desearrollo, Chile
Tyler Cowen, George Mason University
Eric Crampton, University of Canterbury, New Zealand
Andrew Farrant, Dickinson College
Samuel Hollander, Professor Emeritus, University of Toronto
M. Ali Khan, Johns Hopkins University
Thomas Leonard, Princeton University
Deirdre McCloskey, University of Illinois, Chicago
Leonidas Montes, Dean of School of Government, Universidad Adolfo Ibañez, Chile
Maria Pia Paganelli, Yeshiva University and New York University
Warren J. Samuels, Professor Emeritus, Michigan State University
Eric Schliesser, VENI post-doctoral research fellow, Leiden University, and University of Amsterdam
Gordon Tullock, George Mason University

Sandra J. Peart is Dean of the Jepson School of Leadership Studies, University of Richmond, Virginia.

David M. Levy is Professor of Economics at George Mason University (GMU) and Research Associate at the Center for Study of Public Choice at GMU.

They are Co-Directors of George Mason University's Summer Institute for the Preservation of the History of Economics.

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The "Vanity of the Philosopher"

From Equality to Hierarchy in Post-Classical Economics

Sandra J. Peart and David M. Levy

University of Michigan Press, 2005

The "Vanity of the Philosopher" continues the themes introduced in Levy's acclaimed book How the Dismal Science Got Its Name.

Here, Peart and Levy tackle the issues of racism, eugenics, hierarchy, and egalitarianism in classical economics and take a broad view of classical economics' doctrine of human equality. Responding to perennial accusations from the left and the right that the market economy has created either inequality or too much equality, the authors trace the role of the eugenics movement in pulling economics away from the classical economist's respect for the individual toward a more racist view at the turn of the century.

The "Vanity of the Philosopher" reveals the consequences of hierarchy in social science. It shows how the "vanity of the philosopher" has led to recommendations that range from the more benign but still objectionable "looking after" paternalism, to overriding preferences, and, in the extreme, to eliminating purportedly bad preferences. The authors suggest that an approach that abstracts from difference and presumes equal competence is morally compelling.

"People in the know on intellectual history and economics await the next book from Peart and Levy with much the same enthusiasm that greets a new Harry Potter book in the wider world. This book delivers the anticipated delights big time!"
-William Easterly, Professor of Economics and Africana Studies, NYU, and non-resident Senior Fellow, Center for Global Development

"In their customary idiosyncratic manner, Sandra Peart and David Levy reexamine the way in which the views of classical economists on equality and hierarchy were shifted by contact with scholars in other disciplines, and the impact this had on attitudes towards race, immigration, and eugenics. This is an imaginative and solid work of scholarship, with an important historical message and useful lessons for scholars today."
-Stanley Engerman, John Munro Professor of Economics and Professor of History, University of Rochester

Sandra J. Peart, Professor of Economics at Baldwin-Wallace College, has published articles on utilitarianism, the methodology of J. S. Mill, and the transition to neoclassicism. This is her fourth book. David M. Levy is Professor of Economics at George Mason University and Director of the Center for Study of Public Choice. This is his third book.

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