The Religion of a Skeptic: Frank H. Knight on Ethics, Spirituality and Religion During His Iowa Years
28 Pages Posted: 9 Apr 2007
Date Written: March 18, 2007
Abstract
Frank H. Knight's antagonism to religion is well-known, and features prominently in his writings from the 1930s on. But during the 1920s, when he was a professor at the University of Iowa and wrote some of his most important essays on the limitations of economics, Knight was an active participant in the Iowa City Unitarian church. Drawing upon research about his association with the Unitarian church, and his unpublished writings from the period on religion, economics and social organization, the paper argues that the Unitarian association provided a community open to discussion of the multi-dimensionality of human experience, which assisted Knight in his investigation of ethics, economics, science, and liberal democracy. In the end, however, his association with the Unitarians evaporated when he moved back to the University of Chicago in 1928.
Keywords: Knight, religion, spirituality, Unitarianism, liberalism, liberal democracy, religion and economics, religion and politics
JEL Classification: B31
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation