Publication Number: 2024-10
Publication Date: November 2024
I argue that the outbreak of the Great War facilitated a shift in the dominant view of human
nature within the Cambridge-Bloomsbury intelligentsia, steering it away from an optimistic view
toward a pessimistic one. The conceptualization of human reason and rationality within this
group, however, remained intact throughout the war. Frank Ramsey and John Maynard Keynes
produced some of their most notable works within this evolving intellectual context. They
followed the interwar orthodoxy by adopting its description of human nature. But they departed
from the orthodoxy by revising its underlying conceptual commitment concerning what
constitutes human reason and rationality. I show that Ramsey and Keynes developed their ideas
in tandem. They both argued for the pragmatist idea that our normative theory of human life
ought to be sensitive to what we can ask from human nature. Ramsey made this argument in his
philosophy. Keynes made it in his economics.
Keywords: Frank Ramsey; John Maynard Keynes; Reason; Intellectualism; Pragmatism
