Diploma in hand he returned to Cambridge

The work is complex, brilliant and iconoclastic. The man looks like him. But better. In richer, more eclectic. The figure exceeds, by far, the borders of the economy. John Maynard Keynes is an unbelievable Alchemy of paradoxes and contradictions. Its existence consists of so many facets that this so british intellectual interests. In what it called "biographical fantasy on Keynes", her friend, the famous novelist Virginia Woolf in fact enumeration: "Policy." S. Dance. Letters. Economic. Youth. The future. Glands. Genealogies. Atlantis. Morality. Religion. Cambridge. Eton. The theatre. Society. Truth. Pigs. Sussex. The history of England. America. Optimism. Stuttering. Old books. Hume. "(1934, p. 274)." Keynes is therefore both. A kaleidoscope. But the most remarkable is that his unit is embodied in this scattered, and his legacy in economic science is inseparable from his personal trajectory.

No tearing in this motley assemblage. The red thread is probably three dominant traits of his personality. Dominant and permanent: they illuminate this existence multiplied and frenetic. Elitiste to the end of the nail, and fundamentally anti-conformist, j. M. Keynes is also and perhaps above all an intellectual wrestler out.

Elitism, Maynard, as called it his parents, was born with or in it. In the Holy of Holies, in the heart of the temple of British intelligence: Cambridge. Keynes maintained a close relationship with the city of knowledge and its illustrious University life during. The United Kingdom is at the height of its power. It dominates the world and its intelligentsia, at the height of the Victorian era, has a superiority complex and young Maynard will cultivate the legacy until climax.

Cambridge is the family home for several generations. On the side of father's, he returned to the grandfather of John Maynard to comfortably enriched the family, through land speculation. Was then only an academic pedigree for Victorian bourgeois model. This will be the task of the father, John Neuville Keynes, upset mathematician to become lecturer (in Economics), then head of the archives of the University. Intellectual honest but boring, he will see on his eldest son, the ambition to extend family academic ascension. Without abandoning the sister, Margaret, and the cadet Geoffrey, he concentrated on Maynard attention, preparing them as a champion for a destiny of exception. His mother, itself derived from cambridgiennes roots, will embody openness to social issues. It was one of the first women to be a graduate of Cambridge. Very involved in the cultural life, charitable works (it is even elected a time Mayor of the town), Maynard him dedicated a love without limits. A severe but timid father, a mother feminist activist; between academicism and conformism, future prodigy is on track in a classic Oedipus schema.

Fragile health, the acquired boy to at the outset an exceptional confidence in himself. This privileged education goes almost naturally lead to integrate the Royal way of the time: Eton. The crucible of the elite English. This pay, quasi monarchical institution included boarding a small group sorted on the pane. Maynard was the competition in 1897. En route to intellectual excellence, it accesses also socially gentry. Eton is the temple of knowledge, money or social origins (there are a handful of scholars) are secondary, but it is between themselves. Ultra-fermé Club, one of the "distinction", within the meaning of Bourdieu. The elite of the elite. Although crowded too much body, Maynard is (except in sport) very uncomfortable in this pot exclusively male and competitive. He acquired two habits that will accompany him throughout his life. The verbal jousting, Keynes aguerrit eloquence, speaker and debater and skills; his epistolary logorrhoea, he wrote all the time and all.

Ambition. Keynes wanted to be the best. Works hard. Arouses the admiration of his comrades. Was elected to the Eton Society, the ultimate. And take taste this small circle of insiders convinced of their superiority. It will be a mode of operation, convinced that the influence on the development of the world rests on these small co-opted brotherhoods. Diploma in hand, he returned to Cambridge. Math and preferred the philo the economy. But his fate will reject it too well drawn academic career. He then wrote his first essay, in which broke out his elitist conception of democracy. And he wants to be. His sense of superiority borders on arrogance. Confused, he seeks his way to print its mark. Accepts all the duties of representation. Its goal: become the conductor of his generation. One foot in the University. He taught little, but is involved in its management. Other cases: senior civil servant, he bored closes and resigned. But his relationship with the administration, where he became a more prominent Adviser, remains. At the same time, he speculated on the stock exchange. With attendance, not always with foresight. Twice he end the ruin but, overall, this activity will ensure him a comfortable prosperity. It will become a figure in the City, Chairman of several boards of Directors.

Liberal and patriotic without being nationalistic, it is the economic expert of the Liberal Party (the large formation of alternating the Conservatives before the rise of the Labour Party), but declines all elective proposals. Analyst and polemicist, he use and abuse of the press to get noticed. He then chose the large prints, while he leads the main journal of Economics of the time, the Economic Journal, to exist as a theorist.

Public notoriety, Keynes acquires it in 1919, he was 36 years old. Adviser to the Government to negotiate the conditions of peace and therefore the issue of German reparations, he resigned with crashing. Convinced that the exorbitant amount requested from the vanquished bears in germ a future conflict, he was violently opposed to the Treaty (also influenced by pro-allemands and anti-French feelings). Transforms the visionary episode in a book the economic consequences of peace which became a bestseller and the drives on the front of the London scene.

His intellectual magnetism earned him to be revered. His lectures from Monday will be a bit in the image of the lessons at the College of France of a Michel Foucault, for example. It becomes the