Volume 53, Number 20 · December 21, 2006
Is Capitalism Good for You?
By Alan Ryan
The Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics for an Age of Commerce
by Deirdre N. McCloskey
University of Chicago Press, 616 pp., $32.50
The Authentic Adam Smith: His Life and Ideas
by James Buchan
Norton, 256 pp., $23.95
The idea of providing an exuberant defense of bourgeois virtues seems on the face of it absurd. In common parlance, 'bourgeois' is synonymous with 'humdrum' and 'conventional.' The ideal bourgeois citizen is cautious and anxious; given to deferred gratification, to considering the rainy days ahead, and to paying the price in present pleasures foregone. The bourgeois emulates the ant, not the grasshopper, working hard during the good times to survive the bad times that must lie ahead. When critics talk of 'bourgeois virtues,' it is often with a sneer. Prudence is a virtue, but 'bourgeois prudence' is a synonym for timidity and meanness; and 'bourgeois courage' sounds very like a contradiction in terms. Exuberance seems foreign to the bourgeois soul; but a book that opens with the ringing declaration 'I bring good news about our bourgeois lives' promises to be long on exuberance and short on anxiety. And so it proves.
Review, 4646 words
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