For a century and a half, the artists and intellectuals of Europe have scorned the bourgeoisie. And for a millennium and a half, the philosophers and theologians of Europe have scorned the marketplace. The bourgeois life, capitalism, Mencken’s “booboisie” and David Brooks’s “bobos”—all have been, and still are, framed as being responsible for everything from financial to moral poverty, world wars, and spiritual desuetude. Countering these centuries of assumptions and unexamined thinking is Deirdre McCloskey’s The Bourgeois Virtues, a magnum opus that offers a radical view: capitalism is good for us.McCloskey’s sweeping, charming, and even humorous survey of ethical thought and economic realities—from Plato to Barbara Ehrenreich—overturns every assumption we have about being bourgeois.

一个半世纪以来，欧洲的艺术家和知识分子蔑视资产阶级。一千年半以来，欧洲的哲学家和神学家一直蔑视市场。资产阶级生活、资本主义、门肯的“booboisie”和大卫·布鲁克斯的“bobos”——所有这些都被认为是从金融到道德贫困、世界大战和精神堕落的罪魁祸首。德尔德雷·麦克罗斯基（Deirdre McCloskey）的著作《资产阶级的美德》（The Bourgear Derities）反驳了几个世纪以来的假设和未经检验的思想，这部巨著提出了一个激进的观点：资本主义对我们有好处，甚至对从柏拉图到芭芭拉·埃伦赖希的伦理思想和经济现实的幽默调查也推翻了我们关于资产阶级的所有假设。