Bernard Mandeville
Commercial societies thrive on the passions moralists condemn – pride, vanity, envy, love of luxury; virtue is largely an invention of clever politicians who flatter pride to tame self-love, and a nation that became truly honest and frugal would lose its trade and power.
Placement
Dutch-born physician in London: in “The Fable of the Bees” a thriving hive lives on vanity, luxury and greed and decays once it turns honest; private vices, skilfully managed by politicians, produce public benefits, and virtue itself grew from flattered pride.
Key ideas
- Private vices, public benefits
- Pride and the origin of virtue
- Luxury and prosperity
- Social order without design
Influence
Influenced by 1
Pierre Bayle
influenced by
Mandeville took from Bayle’s Various Thoughts on the Comet (1682) the view that people act from passions, not professed principles, which underlies The Fable of the Bees (1714). P. Bayle, Pensées diverses sur la comète (1682); B. Mandeville, The Fable of the Bees, ed. F. B. Kaye (1924), introduction; SEP “Bernard Mandeville”
Evidence: AI draft
Pierre Bayle › 1647–1706
Influenced 2
David Hume
influenced
Introducing the Treatise (1739), Hume named Mandeville, with Locke, Shaftesbury, Hutcheson and Butler, among those who began to put the science of man on a new footing. D. Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature (1739), Introduction; SEP “Bernard Mandeville”
Evidence: AI draft
David Hume › 1711–1776
Karl Marx
influenced
In Capital I (1867) Marx quoted the Fable of the Bees, calling Mandeville an upright man with a clear mind who saw that wealth rests on the labouring poor. K. Marx, Das Kapital I (1867), on the general law of capitalist accumulation; B. Mandeville, The Fable of the Bees (1714)
Evidence: AI draft
Karl Marx › 1818–1883
Criticism
Criticized by 5
George Berkeley
criticised by
Berkeley’s Alciphron (1732, Dialogue II) attacked Mandeville’s thesis that private vices are public benefits, voiced by the free-thinker Lysicles; Mandeville replied in A Letter to Dion. G. Berkeley, Alciphron, or the Minute Philosopher (1732), Dialogue II; B. Mandeville, A Letter to Dion (1732)
Evidence: AI draft
George Berkeley › 1685–1753
Francis Hutcheson
criticised by
Hutcheson’s Inquiry (1725) defended Shaftesbury ‘against the Author of the Fable of the Bees’, arguing that a moral sense approves benevolence independently of self-interest. F. Hutcheson, An Inquiry into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue (1725), title page and Treatise II; SEP “Francis Hutcheson”
Evidence: AI draft
Francis Hutcheson › 1694–1746
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
criticised by
Rousseau granted Mandeville that pity is natural but objected that he missed that generosity, clemency and humanity all flow from it (Second Discourse, 1755). J.-J. Rousseau, Discours sur l’origine de l’inégalité (1755), Part I
Evidence: AI draft
Jean-Jacques Rousseau › 1712–1778
Adam Smith
criticised by
Smith called Mandeville’s system ‘wholly pernicious’: it treats every passion as vice and confuses the love of true praiseworthiness with vanity (Theory of Moral Sentiments, 1759, VII.ii.4). A. Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), VII.ii.4 (“Of licentious systems”)
Evidence: AI draft
Adam Smith › 1723–1790
Immanuel Kant
criticised by
Kant listed Mandeville’s grounding of morality in the civil constitution among the material, heteronomous principles unfit to found moral law (Critique of Practical Reason, 1788, Ak. 5:40). I. Kant, Kritik der praktischen Vernunft (1788), §8, Remark II (AA V 40)
Evidence: AI draft
Immanuel Kant › 1724–1804
Works
A verse fable of 1705 (“The Grumbling Hive”) expanded with prose remarks and essays (1714, enlarged 1723, second part 1729): a prosperous hive that turns honest loses its trade, arts and power, since commerce lives on desire, vanity and luxury.
Position
Mandeville is on the map as the author of a provocative book of the Enlightenment and a forerunner of theories of unintended social order. “The Fable of the Bees” argues that commercial societies thrive on the very passions moralists condemn: pride, vanity, envy and the love of luxury create demand, employment and the arts, so that “private vices” become “public benefits” when “skilful politicians” channel them. In “An Enquiry into the Origin of Moral Virtue” he claimed that virtue was invented by lawgivers who flattered human pride to make people restrain their appetites. If virtue is defined strictly as self-denial, almost nothing in a flourishing society is virtuous – a rigorism whose ironic intent is still debated. His “Essay on Charity and Charity-Schools” (1723), which argued that educating the labouring poor would unfit them for hard work, caused a public scandal. The book provoked replies from Hutcheson, Berkeley, William Law and many others; Adam Smith called it a “licentious system” but took up much of its analysis of commerce, Kant counted Mandeville among the heteronomous moralists, and Marx quoted him with respect. Twentieth-century economists such as Hayek and Keynes rediscovered him as an early theorist of spontaneous order and of demand.
Life & context
Bernard Mandeville was born in Rotterdam in November 1670 (baptised on 20 November) into a family of physicians and civic officials. He studied philosophy and medicine at Leiden, where he defended the Cartesian view that animals lack feeling in a disputation of 1689 and took his medical degree in 1691 with a thesis on digestion. His family was caught up in the Rotterdam tax riot of 1690, after which his father was banished from the city. In the 1690s Mandeville went to London, where he settled as a physician specialising in “hypochondriack and hysterick passions”, married in 1699 and wrote in English. His verse fable “The Grumbling Hive” (1705) grew into “The Fable of the Bees” (1714); the enlarged edition of 1723 was presented by the Grand Jury of Middlesex as a public nuisance. He died in Hackney on 21 January 1733.
Further main works
- The Grumbling Hive: or, Knaves Turn’d Honest (1705)
- A Treatise of the Hypochondriack and Hysterick Passions (1711)
- An Enquiry into the Origin of Honour, and the Usefulness of Christianity in War (1732)
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