John Maynard Keynes

John Maynard Keynes

John Maynard Keynes was born in 1883 which means he lived around the same time period as the seven creative individuals which Howard Gardner chose to focus on in his book Creating Minds. I chose to look at the life of Maynard Keynes because it is such a fascinating and diverse one. While entailing some of the same features found in the lives of those Gardner focused on, Maynard's life includes a lot of differences and adds some interesting twists as well. It can only be beneficial and interesting to see how this creative individual fits into Gardner's model. Keynes was one of the most influential economists of the twentieth century, and one of only a handful of social scientists who, through their writings, have significantly affected the course of history. His influence on economics was so great that the boom the Western industrial countries experienced between 1945 and 1975 has been termed the "Age of Keynes." When beginning to see how Keynes came to have such an impact and how he fits into Gardner's model, we must first introduce a little bit of his background and his life. The fifty or so years before the writing of The General Theory, which is perhaps Keynes most revolutionary book, plays a large role in how this work came about.

John Maynard Keynes was born in Cambridge, the oldest son of John Neville Keynes and Florance Ada Keynes. The lineage of these two people is very impressive, as are the people themselves. At the time of his son's birth, John Neville Keynes was a lecturer of political economy at Cambridge and eventually went on to become the university's chief administrative official. Florance Ada was a graduate of Newnham college in Cambridge and a pioneer of social work for the city. She...

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... to maintaining high levels of employment. It was published at a time conducive to economic change, the inter-war period, when economic theory was in need of reform. Following its publication he became the most influential figure in British economic policy having a whole era bere his name for eternity.

From his secure middle class family and his elite education at Eaton and Cambridge, to his close friendship with the Bloomsbury circle, Keynes had confidence to depart from the normal to develop his full creative ability and change the way economists think. His heritage gave him a strong sense of responsibility which explains his dedication to matters of statsmanship. He became interested in perserving traditions of social life which sustained freedom of belief, of action, of individuality; he became a creative genius.

Today, we are all Keynsians - Richard Nixon