This paper reflects on Deirdre McCloskey’s book “Rhetoric of economics” on the occasion of its Russian edition. McCloskey’s intellectual evolution is marked by the early interest in economic history that is then linked to the interdisciplinary humanistic search of the origins of capitalism. The article reconstructs the basic ideas of McCloskey on economics and the possibilities of its humanisation and shows the role of rhetoric for the later work on the boirgeois virtues and dignity. It also demontrates the remnants of modernism in McCloskey’s texts such as the dominant role of the author and the failure to fully recognize economy itself as a rhetorical phenomenon.