Rethinking the Future

Rethinking the Future is the story of a relationship between two highly original thinkers who achieved great distinction in their chosen fields and in their respective countries. After a distinguished career in law, civil administration, and industrial management, Geoffrey Vickers made an exceptional contribution to academic debate with regard to ethics, epistemology, and "governance" - the art of maintaining stable relationships over time. One of the most eminent scholars of political economics in the Western world and a gifted teacher, Adolph Lowe inspired generations of economics students at the New School for Social Research in New York, and has published a number of seminal books on the subject. The friendship between the two was very close, taking shape through a correspondence and occasional visits to one side or the other of the Atlantic. It lasted more than forty years.This volume reflects the extraordinarily wide-ranging nature of the correspondence between Lowe and Vickers, and the continuing discussion of what it means to be human at the end of the twentieth century. The letters provide a personal commentary on some of the major events of this century, including many that were highly controversial. The book shows how these two scholars contributed to the development of the central ideas of the century. They are particularly relevant to present concerns, dealing as they do with economics and management, social and political sciences, governance and public policy. Discussing major national and international problems from very different - and sometimes opposite - standpoints, the two men are able, through this extraordinary correspondence, to formulate ideas of great wisdom and foresight with regard to the world that awaits us as the twenty-first century appears on the horizon. Economists, political scientists, and sociologists will find this correspondence stimulating and enlightening.

An Introduction to Sir Geoffrey Vickers and Dr. Adolph Lowe; The Correspondents; Going to war; The rise of the Nazis; Law and politics; The Moot; The ambiguity of freedom; World Warn; The post-war world; Formulating the appreciative system; The revolutionary Sixties; The onset of ill-health; Ethics as focal point; Clinging to the web; Mutual appreciation; The end of a partnership; The Letters 1. War and its Aftermath 2. The Fifties 3. The Sixties; The beginning of revolt; Disabilities; Freedom in a Rocking Boat; Emancipation; Deficit financing 4. The Early Seventies 5. The Late Seventies 6. The Eighties Looking back; Epilogue