Liberty Fund lost a great friend recently with the passing of Paul Lewis. Paul was a professor of political economy at Kings College, London and had been on the faculty of Cambridge prior to that. Paul was a great interpreter of economic thought and specific thinkers – so much so that Bruce Caldwell asked him to edit a volume of Hayek’s Collective Works. He was in the middle of working on another volume when he tragically passed away at the far too young age of 53.
Paul’s work was broadly at the intersection of philosophy and economics, but it was his macrolevel writings comparing the various schools that comprise much of classical liberal thought in the 20th century that established him as a first rate scholar among pro-liberty economists and philosophers. He was “fluent” in Austrian economics, public choice, and the Bloomington School, and he published numerous papers with leading scholars in each field.
He was also the king of great titles for his papers when he could. A recent paper with John Meadowcroft in Constitutional Political Economy called Buchanan and Vincent Ostrom “Constitutional Artisans”. There was The Hand Behind the Invisible Hand, which explored the concept of the invisible hand across classical liberal thought, and the ironically titled Far from a Nihilist Crowd: The Theoretical Contribution of Radical Subjectivist Austrian Economics. Perhaps my personal favorite is Orders, Orders Everywhere…..On Hayek’s the Market and other Orders, which is a super title and a very interesting paper. He could see linkages across the territory that many of the most influential classical liberal economists occupy and we are all the better for his research.
I actually vividly remember the first time I met Paul. We were at Ockenden Manor in 2007. There was a lot that struck me about Paul including his scholarly and thoughtful approach to his work, his genuine and easy smile, along with his self-deprecating sense of humor. I also encountered him running through a field while I was quite slothfully walking through the countryside. You could tell he loved his life and what he did.
Paul and I ended up working together regularly on a lot of Liberty Fund projects. Paul and Liberty Fund weren’t necessarily always politically aligned, but he was aligned with our mission and especially our texts, which he took as seriously and honestly as anyone I have ever encountered in my work. He directed his first Liberty Fund conference with me in 2011 on Isaiah Berlin. I found the conference so interesting I ended up writing a paper on Berlin’s economics, which Paul then graciously invited me to present at King’s to a faculty and student group. In typical Paul fashion he chopped me to pieces kindly during the discussion part of the event and then bought me a really good dinner afterwards.
We ended up working together on a lot of conferences that always made me think and challenged my priors. Our last was on the Hayek Collected Works volume he had edited, and it was a super event attended by Bruce Caldwell and an outstanding group. Paul contributed a lot to our conference program and we cannot ever fully repay him for his work on helping us promote conversation about the free and responsible society. He will be very much missed.
