Mandeville’s Fable
Mandeville’s Fable

Author: Robin Douglass

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2023-05-02

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 0691224692

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Why we should take Bernard Mandeville seriously as a philosopher Bernard Mandeville’s The Fable of the Bees outraged its eighteenth-century audience by proclaiming that private vices lead to public prosperity. Today the work is best known as an early iteration of laissez-faire capitalism. In this book, Robin Douglass looks beyond the notoriety of Mandeville’s great work to reclaim its status as one of the most incisive philosophical studies of human nature and the origin of society in the Enlightenment era. Focusing on Mandeville’s moral, social, and political ideas, Douglass offers a revelatory account of why we should take Mandeville seriously as a philosopher. Douglass expertly reconstructs Mandeville’s theory of how self-centred individuals, who care for their reputation and social standing above all else, could live peacefully together in large societies. Pride and shame are the principal motives of human behaviour, on this account, with a large dose of hypocrisy and self-deception lying behind our moral practices. In his analysis, Douglass attends closely to the changes between different editions of the Fable; considers Mandeville’s arguments in light of objections and rival accounts from other eighteenth-century philosophers, including Shaftesbury, Hume, and Smith; and draws on more recent findings from social psychology. With this detailed and original reassessment of Mandeville’s philosophy, Douglass shows how The Fable of the Bees—by shining a light on the dark side of human nature—has the power to unsettle readers even today.

Bernard de Mandeville's Tropology of Paradoxes
Bernard de Mandeville's Tropology of Paradoxes

Author: Edmundo Balsemão Pires

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2015-10-05

Total Pages: 266

ISBN-13: 3319193813

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book integrates studies on the thought of Bernard de Mandeville and other philosophers and historians of Modern Thought. The chapters reflect a rethinking of Mandeville’s legacy and, together, present a comprehensive approach to Mandeville’s work. The book is published on the occasion of the 300 years that have passed since the publication of the Fable of the Bees. Bernard de Mandeville disassembled the dichotomies of traditional moral thinking to show that the outcomes of the social action emerge as new, non-intentional effects from the combination of moral opposites, vice and virtue, in such a form that they lose their moral significance. The work of this great writer, philosopher and physician is interwoven with an awareness of the paradoxical nature of modern society and the challenges that this recognition brings to an adequate perspective on the historical world of modernity.

Mandeville Studies
Mandeville Studies

Author: I. Primer

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2012-12-06

Total Pages: 239

ISBN-13: 940101633X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

For centuries readers have admired the writer who wields his pen like a sword - an Aristophanes, a Rabelais, a Montaigne, a Swift. Using ribaldry, satire and irony in varying proportions, such writers pierce the thick, comfortable hide of society and uncover, predictably, the corruption and hypocrisy that characterize the life of man in commercial society. Though a lesser talent than any of these literary giants, Bernard Mande ville is nevertheless a member of their class. The crucial year in the emergence of his reputation was 1723, the year in which he added his controversial Essay on Charity and Charity-Schools to his Fable of the Bees. From that point on he became one of the most reviled targets of the public guardians of morality and religion; for some he appeared to be truly the Devil incarnate, Mandevil, as Fielding and others spelled it. This reputation was attached to his name well into the nineteenth centu ry. In a diary entry for June 1812 Henry Crabb Robinson recorded the following conversation with the elderly Mrs. Buller: "She received me with a smile, and allowed me to touch her hand. 'What are you reading, Mr. Robinson?' she said. 'The wickedest cleverest book in the English language, if you chance to know it. ' - 'I have known the "Fable of the Bees" more than fifty years. ' She was right in her guess.

Man-Devil
Man-Devil

Author: John J. Callanan

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2025-01-14

Total Pages: 328

ISBN-13: 0691264988

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A lively and provocative account of Bernard Mandeville and the work that scandalized and appalled his contemporaries—and made him one of the most influential thinkers of the eighteenth century In 1714, doctor, philosopher and writer Bernard Mandeville published The Fable of the Bees, a humorous tale in which a prosperous hive full of greedy and licentious bees trade their vices for virtues and immediately fall into economic and societal collapse. Outrage among the reading public followed; philosophers took up their pens to refute what they saw as the fable’s central assertion. How could it be that an immoral community thrived but the introduction of morality caused it to crash and burn? In Man-Devil, John Callanan examines Mandeville and his famous fable, showing how its contentious claim—that vice was essential to the economic flourishing of any society—formed part of Mandeville’s overall theory of human nature. Mandeville, Callanan argues, was perfectly suited to analyze and satirize the emerging phenomenon of modern society—and reveal the gap between its self-image and its reality. Callanan shows that Mandeville’s thinking was informed by his medical training and his innovative approach to the treatment of illness with both physiological and psychological components. Through incisive and controversial analyses of sexual mores, gender inequality, economic structures, and political ideology, Mandeville sought to provide a naturalistic account of human behavior—one that put humans in close continuity with animals. Aware that his fellow human beings might find this offensive, he cloaked his theories in fables, poems, anecdotes, and humorous stories. Mandeville mastered irony precisely for the purpose of making us aware of uncomfortable aspects of our deepest natures—aspects that we still struggle to acknowledge today.

The Fable of the Bees and Other Writings
The Fable of the Bees and Other Writings

Author: Bernard Mandeville

Publisher: Hackett Publishing

Published: 1997-01-01

Total Pages: 268

ISBN-13: 9780872203747

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Although never censored, Bernard Mandeville's anonymously published The Fable of the Bees; or Private Vices, Public Benefits came to be regarded soon after its publication in 1723 as the Enlightenment's epitome of immorality. As a naturalistic account of the mechanisms that condition human desire and of the unintended stabilizing social consequences of self-interested action, it has since been recognized as one the eighteenth century's most significant works of social theory. More sharply focused on Mandeville's social theory than any previous collection of his writings, this abridged and modernized edition includes the most pertinent sections of The Fable, a selection from Mandeville's An Enquiry into the Origin of Honor, and essential background reading from two of Mandeville's most important sources: Pierre Bayle and the Jansenist Pierre Nicole. E. J. Hundert's Introduction places Mandeville in a number of central eighteenth-century debates - particularly that of the nature and morality of commercial modernity - and underscores the degree to which Mandeville's reconception of egoism as a positive social force stood as a central problem, not only for his immediate English contemporaries, but for such philosophers as Hume, Rousseau, and Kant.

Infamous Commerce
Infamous Commerce

Author: Laura J. Rosenthal

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2015-03-19

Total Pages: 405

ISBN-13: 0801454344

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In Infamous Commerce, Laura J. Rosenthal uses literature to explore the meaning of prostitution from the Restoration through the eighteenth century, showing how both reformers and libertines constructed the modern meaning of sex work during this period. From Grub Street's lurid "whore biographies" to the period's most acclaimed novels, the prostitute was depicted as facing a choice between abject poverty and some form of sex work. Prostitution, in Rosenthal's view, confronted the core controversies of eighteenth-century capitalism: luxury, desire, global trade, commodification, social mobility, gender identity, imperialism, self-ownership, alienation, and even the nature of work itself. In the context of extensive research into printed accounts of both male and female prostitution—among them sermons, popular prostitute biographies, satire, pornography, brothel guides, reformist writing, and travel narratives—Rosenthal offers in-depth readings of Samuel Richardson's Clarissa and Pamela and the responses to the latter novel (including Eliza Haywood's Anti-Pamela), Bernard Mandeville's defenses of prostitution, Daniel Defoe's Roxana, Henry Fielding's Tom Jones, and travel journals about the voyages of Captain Cook to the South Seas. Throughout, Rosenthal considers representations of the prostitute's own sexuality (desire, revulsion, etc.) to be key parts of the changing meaning of "the oldest profession."

A Letter to Dion
A Letter to Dion

Author: Bernard Mandeville

Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand

Published: 2020-08-14

Total Pages: 53

ISBN-13: 3752437448

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Reproduction of the original: A Letter to Dion by Bernard Mandeville