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Jeremy Adelman has written an extraordinary book about an extraordinary person: Worldly Philosopher: The Odyssey of Albert O. Hirschman. After his death, The Economist posed the right question: why had Hirschman not been awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics?

That says it all regarding the significance and relevance of Albert Hirschman’s work, which went well beyond economics, as well as the man who, soon after his first writings, became a “worldly philosopher,” as Adelman’s book is titled.

Many of his early books are grounded in his field experience in Latin America. I will not limit myself to those, but rather focus on Albert Hirschman as the person we knew and admired.

I will mention four key aspects of his biography:

1. Hirschman, from very early on his life, had to go through very unfavorable circumstances. As a young university student in Germany when the Nazis were gaining in influence, Albert joined political groups resisting the National Socialists at all levels of society. From one day to the next, he went from being a brilliant student to becoming a political activist. After settling in France, he joined the French Army to fight the German invasion. He had also fought against Franco in Spain. While in Italy, he was active in resisting fascism. All this happened early in his life while he was in his twenties.

Albert Hirschman seldom spoke about these experiences. He just did what he thought was right: to fight for freedom and human rights.

2. When Hirschman was forced to leave France and come to the United States, he had another significant life experience. He joined the public service, and after a period of writing reports that few people read, suddenly he had the opportunity to draft ideas that would help shape such a historical initiative as the Marshall Plan.

But, during this phase when he was employed by the US Federal Government, he also experienced big disappointments, like when he was denied a position in the US Agency for Cooperation in Europe because they suspected he was not “politically reliable.” As a consequence, he was forced to quit. That was when he decided to migrate to Colombia to work as a consultant.

This was the starting point of his lifelong interest in Latin America: an unexpected, and in the end positive, consequence of an initially negative personal experience.

3. Albert Hirschman was also a strong believer in possibilism. At a time when, both on the Right and Left, political discourse stressed the need for radical changes and revolutions, Hirschman was writing about the power of what he called “petit ideas,” tentative ideas that needed to be tested, then adopted or discarded. But, he argued, eventually some of these ideas would become an effective guide to action and change.

He was not ashamed of being called a “reformist,” or “reform monger.” For Albert, at the heart of reform was a process of learning by policy makers. Their tentative ideas and actions would generate “unintended consequences,” which would lead to unexpected and generally positive social and political change. In the final analysis, Albert Hirschman was not only a “possibilist,” but certainly also a “chronic optimist.”

4. As is well described in Adelman’s book, Hirschman had a systematic “bias for hope,” as one of his books was entitled.

From his years of experience as a consultant in Colombia, or when evaluating projects for the World Bank, he always found positive lessons from practical, on-the-ground experience.

On the other hand, when extremely negative political and social circumstances became present, as in Latin America in the late 1960s and 1970s when military coups and dictatorships occurred almost everywhere, Albert Hirschman demonstrated that he had not forgotten about his Marseille experience, when he had helped thousands of Jewish families escape from the Nazis. He became, in fact, an activist organizing support for intellectuals in these countries, whose security or personal lives were at risk.

I was a witness to how he created, through SSRC and the Ford Foundation, a program to allow people to leave their countries with fellowships or similar support. He deserves a great deal of credit for this, as does Peter Bell, Peter Hakim, Jeff Puryear, and Nita Manitzas, who did an extraordinary job making the “bias for hope” a reality.

At the same time, Hirschman was actively connecting with social scientists established in new, fragile, underfunded research centers and think tanks in Latin America. He helped create networks among these centers to exchange experiences and to begin thinking about the future. This was the case with CEBRAP, CEDES and CIEPLAN, in Brazil, Argentina and Chile respectively.

In the case of CIEPLAN, Albert Hirschman not only supported us, but was a member of the first international advisory board in 1977. He accompanied us with a spirit that can only be described as “a bias for hope.”

Having that person, that amazing human being and remarkable economist as a member of our Board made us feel relevant and part of something bigger.

After Patricio Aylwin’s election victory in 1990, which defied all predictions that Chile was a lost cause regarding a successful democratic transition, we invited those friends who had supported us to participate in a seminar the day before the inauguration. The intention was to exchange ideas with those of us who had been appointed ministers in the future administration. Several of our friends and supporters were there: Fernando H. Cardoso, Richard Eckaus, Al Fishlow, Enrique Iglesias, Guillermo O’Donnell, Víctor Tokman, Gabriel Valdés, Peter Hakim and of course, Albert Hirschman. Later that evening we had a private dinner in a gathering full of joy where Albert was present. We celebrated his “bias for hope” becoming a reality.

A few years later (1995), in Brasília, another member of the independent think tank network who resisted dictatorship, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, was elected president of Brazil. The day he was inaugurated as president, he organized a luncheon with a small group of friends at the president’s residence: Albert Hirschman was one of them. Alain Touraine and myself completed the group, and, of course, Albert’s family. On that occasion, I had a feeling that this gathering, in a way, “closed the circle” for Albert, the fighter for democracy and human rights, the possibilist, the reformist. For the father who wrote to his daughter when she graduated that “the great ideas always come from the heart.”

I thank the Inter-American Dialogue for inviting me to pay tribute to a great economist and social scientist, and a person whom we admired.

Albert was always there, whenever and wherever he had to be. In fact, with modesty and with that hidden strength so typical of him, he not only developed great ideas, but also became a source of inspiration for many intellectuals, social scientists and policy makers in Latin America who were building renewed and inclusive democracies.