A Discussion of Bourgeois Equality Chapter 38 “The Causes were Local, Temporary, and Unpredictable” People have a tendency to explain how we got where we are in history as if it was an inevitable process, but in this chapter, Dr. McCloskey is advancing the idea the cultural changes that allowed…
Tag: Aristocratic Deal
Bourgeois Equality
How the Dutch First Got Bougie
A Discussion of Bourgeois Equality Chapter 35 “The Dutch Preached Bourgeois Virtue” In the mood for some Dutch history? When are you not, am I right? If you are anything like me, your historical knowledge of Dutch history is thin. So in this chapter, Dr. McCloskey is making note of…
Bourgeois Equality
Accounting Was Sooo Bourgeois
A Discussion of Bourgeois Equality Chapter 34 “Aristocratic England, For Example, Scorned Measurement” Dr. McCloskey continues exploring the cultural mindset of the Elizabethan era of England in this chapter to demonstrate it did not embrace measurement, which is foundational to the launch of the Great Enrichment in the eighteenth century….
Bourgeois Equality
Elizabethan England Esteemed Elites
A Discussion of Bourgeois Equality Chapter 33 “As Did Elizabethan England Generally” Dr. McCloskey is continuing on with the thesis of last chapter, offering examples of Elizabethan writers other than Shakespeare, who valued hierarchy over the disruptive bourgeois virtues that will allow the trade tested betterment system to take off…
Bourgeois Equality
Hierarchy over Innovation for Shakespeare
A Discussion of Bourgeois Equality Chapter 32 “Bourgeois Shakespeare Disdained Trade and the Bourgeoisie” As Dr. McCloskey has argued in previous chapters, the Great Enrichment that kicks off around 1800 cannot be explained by an improvement in institutions like property rights. In this chapter, she again reminds us of the…
Bourgeois Equality
Seeing The Bourgeois Revaluation in Literature
A Discussion of Bourgeois Equality Chapter 27 “Defoe, Addison, and Steele Show It, Too” Dr. McCloskey demonstrates the literature of the 1700s shifted to reflect the values and the interests of the rising bourgeois class. This Bourgeois Revaluation is simultaneously esteeming the behaviors that will now lead to success and…
Bourgeois Equality
Continuing Evidence: Rising Bourgeois Values Alters Language
A Discussion of Bourgeois Equality Chapter 26 “And so does the Word ‘Eerlijk’” In many ways this chapter is similar to the previous chapter that traced the change in the definition of honest to show how culture was changing. In the 1500s and 1600s, McCloskey says honest meant aristocratic and…
Bourgeois Equality
Honest? I do not think it means what you think it means
A Discussion of Bourgeois Equality Chapter 25 “The Word ‘Honest’ Shows the Changing Attitude Toward the Aristocracy and the Bourgeois” Dr. McCloskey is moving further back in time in this fourth part of the book to examine societal changes in 1700s England that will lead to the Great Enrichment. There…
Bourgeois Equality
Aspiring to Bourgeois Virtues
A Discussion of Bourgeois Equality Chapter 23 “Ben Franklin was Bourgeois and He Embodied Betterment” and Chapter 24 “By 1848 A Bourgeois Ideology Had Triumphed” Two more chapters to conclude this section of the book establishing the ideas that took root in the 1800s that allowed the Bourgeois Deal to…