Philosophy After 1921

After the publication of the TP, Keynes devoted very little time expressly to philosophy, writing nothing more that could be described as an academic contribution. This was certainly intended; he had had enough of the rigours of philosophical logic and now sought to devote himself primarily to less demanding subjects such as economics.2 In a draft preface to the TP he declared: ‘I shall write no more philosophy, having reached a time of life when the brain relents and easier subjects recommend themselves’.3 The attempt by Jean Nicod, a French philosopher who expounded, criticised and extended Keynes’s work, to draw him into a philosophical discussion of induction early in 1923 met with failure, for Keynes was preoccupied elsewhere. ‘I have been postponing my reply’, he wrote, ‘in the hope that I might find time to look through your manuscript … I still hope to do so. But I am at the moment much engaged on other matters, and have not found a moment of leisure convenient for bringing my mind back to the problems of Probability.’4 ‘It is’, Nicod remarked that September, ‘a pity he will not do anything more for the theory of induction.’ Russell’s observation at the time was that Keynes was ‘so busy with politics and money-making that I doubt he ever thinks about probability’, an observation partially confirmed by Keynes the following year in a letter to Wittgenstein about the Tractatus: ‘my mind is now so far from fundamental questions that it is impossible for me to get clear about such matters’.5