We economists, like everyone, are imprisoned in the present time completing our individual life imprisonment without hope of reprieve before death. We are always, and everyone has been, prisoners of that disturbing temporary dynamic, where many times peaceful hopes and sparks of renovating light also abound. It is dangerous to be glutted with the present because that obsession with temporary immediacy does not allow us to see the way of living or thinking of those who preceded us. For them, the important and decisive was not very different from what is also essential for us. The rabid present can suffocate the reflections of other people similar to us, but who lived in different circumstances and of those that we could learn so much. As Emilio Lledó explains in The Memory of the Logos: "Confined in the present, urged and conditioned by the world that surrounds us, we can only breathe for history, for the collective memory. And it is through that memory that we can listen to the voice of the texts and discover that their messages are not simple script; because nobody ever wrote for writing's sake."
I wanted to comment this aloud because I have the impression that a certain ill will is extending in our economic discipline, especially significant in the educational and investigating youths, to read the history of economic thought with serenity. This attitude of scorn for the past can lead us to a galloping deterioration of the doctrinal body that we could apply for the solution of economic problems.
We read many times (if we read them) excellent authors' contributions of other times with a good natured smile believing that they are anachronistic for our times and useless for the attainment of our interests and ambitions in the digital era. Wrapped in the spider's web of the urgencies of the daily present, we are unable to discover and to enlarge the human repercussions of the past, the significances maybe forgotten or the heavenly dominions still unexplored. Accustomed to working, whether we are students or professors, with a quite dogmatic and increasingly formal, functional and abstract doctrinal " corpus ", it is rarely considered necessary to consult an economist even of two centuries ago or of this same contemporary century of whom the "official", "orthodox" and "triumphant" current of thought has idolized to unsuspected heights. It is supposed that all that is valuable and useful in previous works is always present, with purer and more elegant formal explanations, in modern theory. Error does not appear to exist for some, not in economy, mathematics, physics or chemistry because they believe that determinist and seasonal progress is always better, even in economic and political human behaviour or scientific discoveries. With these positions, according to which the latest and increasingly accepted is suitable, scientific social dynamics will only accept renovating ideas when they are concordant with the current science fashion. The established scientific nomenclature turn a deaf ear to exhibitions and authors' points of view from other times that can be very valid and enriching.
Many important economists and economic historians, among which we could highlight Schumpeter or Rothbard, thought that an appropriate understanding of the evolution of science helps to understand its current theoretical, practical or political situation, facilitating the task of separating the miss-placed weed from the structuring wheat. The history of economic thought is not only studied to dominate the current economy explicitly, but rather it should be studied to the extent that it helps notably to understand the path which has been taken to arrive at the present situation of the established intellectual cosmos. Reading the classic teachers enables us to become more sensitive and situate ourselves at the frontier of authentic progress with recognition of our limitations and of our maniac blindness. It does not matter if we reread the same author. I consider, the same as Stigler, that if a great book like Smith's The Wealth of the Nations is read repeatedly, even five or six times, we continue learning new things. It is doubtful that anybody learns completely all the things that Smith wanted to express, and there is even more to learn from an interesting mind than what its possessor wanted to teach us.
To read the works of an economist and understand it, he said that a certain degree of separation at the same time as a certain degree of sympathy is necessary. One can consider the man's work with an analytic microscope, examining each sentence and word with scrupulous care, and however never understand what he is trying to say. It is necessary to avoid hypercriticism and flattery as far as possible. Both serve poorly as guides to interpretation. The purpose of trying to understand man's theoretical system is not to be generous or malicious regarding him, but maximizing the probability that his work contributes to scientific progress. We can only determine if it is a valuable addition to the body of science or, at least, of a line of investigation that can be investigated later on only if the system is very defined and purified of irrelevant digressions, and errors that are not essential. The action of reading a fragment of scientific writing well, will be therefore, a contribution to the progress of science: the professional's reading has improved the original exposition of the theory.

Joseph John Franch Menéu
Gaceta de los Negocios