Robert Levinas Chimsky
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Robert Levinas Chimsky (born March 5, 1899) is a Latvian-born, naturalized-American, economist and political philosopher.
Chimsky is the author of A General Theory of Free Order and Pragmatism whose is generally known as the founder of Free Pragmatism, developing ideas about its effects on Game Theory, trade economics and diplomacy.
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[edit] Early life
Born in Riga at the turn of the century, Robert Chimsky came frome a family of Polish Jews who settled in the Baltic after the Franco-Prussian War. The problems that faced young Jews in the early 20th century, had a major influence in his later studies, namely on the controversy that opposed him and Reinhold Niebuhr, regarding the relating of the Christian faith to the reality of modern politics and economics.
To escape the escalation of violence against Jews, Chimsky fled to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, finding shelter with his kin in the city of Budapest.
[edit] The Budapest University years
Enrolled at the age of 17 in the University of Budapest (today: Eötvös Loránd University), he quickly joined the political and economical groups, to which he left a remarkable legacy, together with his younger friend John von Neumann who would later join him in the United States.
These group of young economists and mathematics, most of them of Jewish heritage have become know as the Budapest School. Although many of them came after to the US, and thus gained world recognition, some remained and were the minds behind the Soviet computer science program.
[edit] Free Order and the American Citizen
Chimsky's theories were greatly unknown, outside Academia, until the publication of his correspondence with Carl Schmitt. His influence on modern thought might have never extended outside the Soviet countries had he not come to New York in 1942.
After becoming a naturalized American citizen in 1952, with many other scientific minds of his time, Chimsky became an educator in several universities but few of his lectures were published. In the 1960s, copies of his topics were easy to find in the east-coast campuses, but no single volume was published until 1971 when, at the request of the university's provost, his major work saw the light of day: A General Theory of Free Order and Pragmatism.
[edit] Free Pragmatism Today
Of the many thinkers that continue Chimsky's work, the most notable have been:
- John Charles Harsanyi, co-recipient of the 1994 Nobel Prize in Economics.
- Yan Tho Zin, author of A Chimsky Reader and W. H. Marlle Professor.
- Richard Rorty, author of Consequences of Pragmatism.
