The Enlightenment's Fable
Bernard Mandeville and the Discovery of Society

Study of influence of Anglo-Dutch Enlightenment theorist, author of infamous maxim 'private vices, public benefits'.

E. J. Hundert (Author)

9780521619424, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 17 February 2005

300 pages
22.8 x 15 x 2 cm, 0.466 kg

'Though words be the signs we have of another's opinions and intentions; yet, because of the equivocation of them is so frequent according to the diversity of contexture, and the company wherewith they go (which the presence of him that speaketh, our sight of his actions and conjecture of his intentions, must help to discharge us of): It must be extremely hard to find out the opinions and meanings of those men that are gone from us long ago, and have left us no other signification thereof but their books; which cannot possibly be undertook without history enough to discover those aforementioned circumstances, and also without great prudence to observe them. Hobbes, Human Nature

The apprehension of society as an aggregation of self-interested individuals, connected only by bonds of envy, competition, and exploitation, is a dominant modern concern, but one first systematically articulated during the European Enlightenment. The Enlightenment's 'Fable' approaches this problem from the perspective of the challenge offered to inherited traditions of morality and social understanding by the Anglo-Dutch physician, satirist and philosopher, Bernard Mandeville. Mandeville's infamous paradoxical maxim 'private vices, public benefits' profoundly disturbed his contemporaries, while his Fable of the Bees had a decisive influence on David Hume, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Adam Smith and Immanuel Kant. Professor Hundert examines the sources and strategies of Mandeville's science of human nature and the role of his ideas in shaping eighteenth century economic, social and moral theories.

Acknowledgements
A note on the text
Introduction and agenda
1. The foundations of a project
2. Self-love and the civilizing process
3. Performance principles of the public sphere
4. A world of goods
5. Imposing closure - Adam Smith's problem
Epilogue: The Fable's modern fate
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: History of ideas [JFCX]