About the Book
When he died in 1930 aged 26, Frank Ramsey had already invented one branch of mathematics and two branches of economics, laying the foundations for decision theory and game theory. Keynes deferred to him; he was the only philosopher whom Wittgenstein treated as an equal. Had he lived he might have been recognized as the most brilliant thinker of the century. This amiable shambling bear of a man was an ardent socialist, a believer in free love, and an intimate of
the Bloomsbury set. For the first time Cheryl Misak tells the full story of his extraordinary life.
Table of Contents:
Foreword: 'Mind and Heart' Part I: Boyhood 1: The Ramseys 2: Winchester Nearly Unmade Him 3: 'We really live in a great time for thinking' Part II: The Cambridge Man 4: Undergraduate Life 5: 'To my generation, he was rather frightening' 6: Ramsey and the Early Wittgenstein 7: Vienna Interlude 8: 'The fundamentals are so philosophical' 9: The New Don 10: Passion Found Part III: An Astonishing Half Decade 11: Settling Down in Work and Life 12: Revolution in Philosophy 13: Two Crises 14: Cambridge Economics 15: Ramseyan Economics: The Feasible First Best 16: 1928 Return to Mathematics 17: Wittgenstein Comes Home 18: 'The problem of philosophy must be divided if I am to solve it' 19: The End and Meaning of a Life
About the Author :
Cheryl Misak is University Professor and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Toronto. She works on American pragmatism, the history of analytic philosophy, ethics and political philosophy, and the philosophy of medicine. Her most recent books include Frank Ramsey: A Sheer Excess of Powers (forthcoming 2020), Cambridge Pragmatism: From Peirce and James to Ramsey and Wittgenstein, The American Pragmatists, Truth and the End of Inquiry: A Peircean Account of Truth, Truth, Politics, Morality: Pragmatism and Deliberation. She has had visiting fellowships or positions at the Goethe University in Frankfurt, the Free University in Berlin, Trinity College Cambridge, St. Johns College Cambridge, and New York University. In 2013, she completed a long run in academic administration at the University of Toronto, culminating as Vice-President and Provost.
Review :
This book is dedicated to the memory of Ramsey in a solemn and comprehensively devoted manner. The author has tried to satisfy all the parties interested in Ramsey for one reason or another...The result is an introduction to his work, as well as an account of his life.
Frank Ramsey: A Sheer Excess of Powers is a very well researched biography, thus is of great value to academic students and professional scholars alike. The book is a joy to read for not only economists but also mathematicians and philosophers too.
an engaging account of the lamentably short life of Ramsey... exemplary piece(s) of intellectual history...
Frank Ramsey [...] makes noble reading. Ms Misak is a born teacher who explains tricky intellectual abstractions with a clarity that is exceptional. More than that, she writes with love. Her tenderness toward Ramsey, his parents and siblings, his wife and friends gives spirit and delicacy to the whole. There is astounding emotional intelligence in every chapter. One feels on each page Ms. Misak's fine mind concentrating hard on doing the best she can. This is an enthralling and glorious book.
Philosophers sometimes play the game of imagining how twentieth-century thought might have been different if Ramsey had survived and his ideas had caught on earlier. That exercise has become more entertaining with the publication of the first full biography ... Misak tells a more colorful story than one might have thought possible so long after such a short life ended.
Misak' narrative is compelling.
Her book is unlikely to be bettered... Misak provides by far the most complete picture we have of Ramsey's personality and personal life.
As a whole, the book is a precious piece for the history of analytic philosophy, nicely written and supported by terrific archival research and a love for the author. It is worth reading it for the pleasure of good writing, for a picture of Cambridge at that time, and to learn more about one of the greatest intellects of the last century.
...a brilliant, evocative biography of Ramsey.
It is thanks to Misak that we can now see Ramsey's mathematical economics from a new and thought-provoking perspective, and this is only one among many reasons why this book deserves to be read.
There is a lot of talk about Bloomsbury, and therefore about sexual freedom and the many instances that made up that freedom. There is unhappiness (Ramsey struggled coming into his own, as a sexual person). There is much talk of psychoanalysis, and of extended stays in Vienna to imbibe the same. There is, as anyone who has read Pigou's biography might guess, a great deal of walking in the mountains. There is Arthur's (Ramsey's father) tragic inattentiveness while driving his car. And there is Ramsey living openly with a woman while (mostly) maintaining his happy marriage. So, it isn't all just philosophy. But the philosophy does make for compelling reading ... one must read this excellent book.
A full intellectual biography of Frank Ramsey, examining both his complex personal life and his work in philosophy, mathematics, and economics.
Cheryl Misak has done valuable work in producing the first biography of Frank Ramsey which is both comprehensive and detailed. Through meticulous documentary research (very well described in the preface), the biographer is able to lift the veil on some of the little-known aspects of Ramsey's intellectual journey and remedy some of the erroneous or magnified perceptions of his life and work. Various excerpts from his correspondences allow us, for example, to put in context Ramsey's depressive episode resulting from an impossible love...Cheryl Misak has successfully met the challenge of inspiring her readers to take the next step - following Ramsey - toward the high peaks of abstract thought in analytical philosophy, mathematical logic, economics, and pure mathematics.
Fascinating ... combining insight, wit and affection with erudition, [Misak] conveys how lovable as well as how brilliant Ramsey was ... She has given Ramsey the biography that he richly deserves.
In her important new work, Cheryl Misak [...] finally gives Ramsey the consideration he deserves ... it is an impressive work. She has a devotion to the archive and her book is thoroughly researched and well put together ... We should feel lucky that we have the work we do, and that Misak has done such a good job of drawing our attention to one of the most important and intriguing figures in 20th-century philosophy.
A monument to good scholarship while still conveying the human being at the centre ... A landmark book if you dwell among the modernists.
Writing a biography of a man with such an amazing capacity and range of interests is itself extraordinarily demanding but the author succeeds admirably... hugely informative as well as entertaining and a vivid picture of the contemporary Cambridge intellectual landscape.
truly comprehensive 'life and works'.
Thought-provoking, wide-ranging, and highly readable.
Cheryl Misak's Frank Ramsey: A Sheer Excess of Powers is terrific... This biography is my book of the year so far.
This is a gripping read about the twentieth century's forgotten genius. It provides a fascinating and meticulously detailed portrait of Frank Ramsey's life and times. Finally, Ramsey has the biography he deserves.
In this brilliantly written biography of Frank Ramsey, the philosophical and mathematical genius, Cheryl Misak helps us to understand how this innovative thinker could transform so much of the intellectual world of the twentieth century in a short life that ended before he turned 27. The story of Ramsey - his life, his ideas and his engaging arguments with others - as told by Misak is both deeply insightful and much fun to read.
I read the book over three long nights of lockdown, in the middle of an Australian winter. Id expected to find it fascinating, but not to find it so gripping... she [Misak] takes us so successfully into Ramseys world, and we know how it ends... [she] pitches things just right. She takes us into Ramseys personal world, without over-dramatising it.
