CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD.

John Maynard Keynes
Hopes Betrayed: 1883-1920
Robert Skidelsky
Viking, $23, 496 pp.

John Maynard Keynes
The Economist as Saviour: 1920-1937
Robert Skidelsky
Viking, $25, 768 pp.

John Maynard Keynes
Fighting for Britain: 1937-1946
Robert Skidelsky
Viking, $34.95, 576 pp.

It's called the "dismal science" for a reason. Over the last hundred years, economics has struggled with a conflicting, contradictory, and maddening set of assumptions, demands, and presumptions. Whether it's been a mirror of the times, a prognosticator (with a decidedly mixed track record), or a thinly veiled ideological force masquerading as a simple statement of fact, economics has always been as contentious as the sociopolitical battles that underpin it. As a discipline concerned with human beings engaged in the most fundamental as well as sophisticated of exchanges and transactions, economics can be a tool for understanding society as a whole. At the same time, lacking the precision of the physical sciences and open to endless interpretation, economics is easily recruited as a weapon in a broader war of values and veiled interests. For example, there is an on-going, almost theological dispute about the original intent of the founding economic thinkers and theorists. Think about the twenty-year battle, which began with the Reagan-Thatcher revolutions, over the soul and thought of Adam Smith and you understand why controlling the past secures the present.

Towering over most of the twentieth century was arguably the oddest of economic giants. John Maynard Keynes was an aesthete, a scholar, a deeply artistic individual who seemed destined for a life of bohemian as well as academic success. A lover of beauty, bisexual at a time when it was illegal, a friend of eccentrics and geniuses, he ended up the near-perfect figure to think through the wholesale transition in values, both political and economic, that marked the shift from the Victorian to the modern age. As an economist, he is perhaps best known as an advocate of government spending to spur economic activity.

Lord Robert Skidelsky has documented the life and times of Keynes in a three-volume biography, the last volume of which was released late last year. His effort matches the genius of his subject. This is a biography that defies and exceeds all expectations. Keynes had a life bursting at the seams with intrigue and accomplishment, and his multifaceted social, intellectual, and political connections are enough to please the historical-minded as well as the the celebrity gossip. Skidelsky paints on a vast canvas spanning Victorian, Edwardian, and post- World War I England, and this trilogy immerses the reader in continuing education of the finest sort.

What drives this detailed and thorough exploration of Keynes's life and thought is to a certain extent a simple question. What made this man, this walking, talking mass of paradox and seeming contradiction, almost the perfect avatar for his age and a thinker whose ideas remain pertinent today? Skidelsky devoted a good part of the past quarter-century to answering that question, and the answer might be boiled down to this: Keynes wasn't just an economist. He was a moral philosopher who wrestled throughout his life with the link, if any, between public and private duty. What was the connection between being good, living a good life, and society at large? It's intriguing to think, and Skidelsky does make the reader think throughout the biography, about how odd these questions seem to many people in this day of triumphant capitalism. Today the goal of much of our private and public lives seems to be mere prosperity. For Keynes prosperity was always a tool used to pursue other goals. Keynes's project could be described as an effort at "re-moralizing the capitalist system." In the 1800s the link between morals and commerce was clear, if not always effective. The purpose of an economy was outside itself: It was to serve the larger progress of society. Keynes tried to re-animate that kind of thinking. For example, mass unemployment was more than just a cyclical occurrence; it was a threat to society's very existence. When Keynes argued for unorthodox means and tools to combat the horrendous unemployment of the Great Depression, it was partly because he knew that he was fighting a greater evil than low productivity and loss of purchasing power.

Most good biographies make us wrestle anew with how our everyday thinking has been reduced to cliches, to a kind of shorthand that robs us of the complexity of ideas and the complexity of life. Skidelsky does that. Keynes had one overarching goal: Maintain an economic system that would at least allow people to struggle with their own individual search for the good. Living through World War I, the Depression, and the rise of totalitarian fascism and communism, Keynes pursued that aim in a world where markets, societies, and economies were roiling and self-destructive. In an especially tumultuous time, he searched for a responsible way to maintain the bare essentials of civilization. The extent to which he succeeded remains something of a miracle.

Keynes was not an easy person to have around. He was brilliant, demanding, talented, and determined. And most frustrating for many, according to Skidelsky, Keynes was a man who had no problem changing his mind. If something was broke, fix it. Keynes was famous for abandoning his own theories or, rather, seeing his theories in the light of practical politics. According to many of his contemporaries, Keynes's greatness was best revealed by how he responded to the difficulties of the moment. He often made fun of more "academic economists," chiding them for ignoring the impact--or lack of impact--of their ideas on the real world.

The reader comes away from this work knowing at least one thing with certainty: The ideological debate that swirls around Keynesian thought these days is simplistic, inadequate, and a disservice to very serious and important questions. One small example demonstrates this point clearly. For Keynes, the economic power of the state was an instrument of last resort, a means to restore or correct the deficiencies of the private economy. There were many ways the system could unravel, and it was the duty of those in political authority to use the means at hand to make sure it didn't happen. Sadly, Keynes's ideas are often reduced today, by those on both the left and the right, to the slogan that deficits don't matter.

As Skidelsky rightly observes, it was because Keynes was more than an economist that he was so great. He thought about society in a manner that was fueled by philosophy, literature, art, and a firm understanding that the good in life was possible when the economy allowed people freedom. Freedom didn't make the good inevitable, but its absence made the good impossible.

For most of us the prospect of tackling this mammoth biography is intimidating. Its three volumes contain almost two thousand pages, which include detailed explorations of economic theory and a cast of characters in the hundreds. Happily, the facility of Skidelsky's prose makes the task a delight. In the end, you are left pining for a contemporary economist who could entertain questions about meaning, who knows the difference between mathematics and morality, and who thinks we all should be able to pursue the good.

Peter Kavanagh is senior producer with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.