Fordham Lectures on Economics
In January 2000 McShane gave a series of lectures on Bernard Lonergan’s economics at Fordham University’s Lincoln Center campus in New York City.
1. “This Is Worth a Life”
McShane begins by quoting Stephen McKenna, who, when he discovered Plotinus and pondered the possibility of translating the Greek into English, said “This is worth a life.” He then introduces the challenge of identifying the basic variables of economics as an empirical science, providing examples from the emergence of the elementary sciences.
2. Reading the Basic Diagram
McShane lectures on the basic variables and “baseball diagram” of Lonergan’s Economics at Fordham University, January 2000. In the Preface to Economics for Everyone (3rd ed., 2017), McShane treats the same topic.
3. Identifying Exchange Functions
McShane lectures on identifying exchange functions in a static economy
4. Distinguishing Levels and Flows in a Static Economy
The focus of this lecture is on distinguishing levels and flows in a static economy.
5. What is Economic Control?
McShane lectures on the normative meaning of economic control.
6. The Relationship Between For a New Political Economy (CWL 21) and Macroeconomic Dynamics: An Essay in Circulation Analysis (CWL 15)
McShane discusses the relationship between Lonergan’s writing efforts in the early 1940s and his later teaching and writing efforts in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
7. The Redistributive Function
McShane lectures on the distributive function and exchanges that are not immediately productive, e.g. mergers, buying/selling houses, buying and selling stocks and bonds.
8. Seeing Manhattan, Systems, and Systematics
McShane lectures on the challenge of reading the “baseball diagram” into Manhattan and discusses the possibility of a systematics economics.
9. Investments, Savings, and Credit
McShane lectures on the fundamental meaning of credit and examines the claim that savings are equal to investments.
10. Microeconomic Autonomy
McShane proposes that in good time there will be local economic advisors and democratic control of local economies. He contrasts this with unenlightened government creation of jobs.
11. Money, Credit, and Communal Promise
McShane discusses the nonorthodox meanings of money as a dummy and credit as a communal promise.
12. Education in the Axial Period
McShane speaks about rewriting grade school textbooks, efficient metaphysics, linguistics, musicology, and dance in the transition to a “third stage of meaning.”
McShane elaborates on the challenge of reading classic texts and then contrasts the struggle to understand For a New Political Economy (CWL 21) with simple-minded nominalism. He mentions his own eager efforts at a young age to reach up to Chopin’s meaning and notes that a similar effort with another classic, be it a concerto by Mozart, a painting by Cezanne, or the economics analysis of Lonergan, invites reverence and humility.