Introduction

In the present intellectual environment, going back to past authors may be of some help, not to fuel nostalgia for times gone by but to explore modern economic issues along new perspectives – in short to build theory and understand facts. This is the task of the history of economic thought, when it is not understood as a graveyard for respected albeit no longer read authors but as a living corpus of debates on the same old issues shrunk and distorted by the present mainstream. But not any kind of history of economic thought. We argue that it should be both analytical, thanks to its careful attention to the texts (what did past authors say, was it original and consistent, and what link, if any, did it have with today's economics?) and historical, thanks to its detailed study of the facts (how did the theories reflect and incorporate social relations, institutions, and practical issues?). To simplify, we will call it an historical-analytical way of doing history of economic thought. By contrast with the "Whig" history of economic thought, the historical-analytical way does not presuppose that the shortcomings that may be found in past theories are necessarily errors but considers them as symptoms of difficulties which may also plague modern theory since they arise in the treatment of issues which, in spite of different historical contexts, are common to past and modern political economy. So doing the historical-analytical way of doing HET may find itself in the company of heterodox economics, but we suggest that there is nevertheless a difference in the way history is considered. The last part of the chapter summarizes how the 18 chapters of the volume illustrate the historical-analytical way of doing history of economic thought and bridges this new perspective with modern analysis.