Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Foreword to the One-Volume Reprint
- Introduction
- PROLEGOMENA: SOME QUESTIONS RAISED
- PART I REWORKING NATURAL LAW
- PART II INTELLECT AND MORALITY
- PART III EPICUREANS AND EGOISTS
- Pierre Gassendi
- Pierre Nicole
- Bernard Mandeville
- John Gay
- Claude Adrien Helvétius
- Paul Henri Thiry, Baron d'Holbach
- William Paley
- Jeremy Bentham
- PART IV AUTONOMY AND RESPONSIBILITY
- Supplemental Bibliography
Bernard Mandeville
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Foreword to the One-Volume Reprint
- Introduction
- PROLEGOMENA: SOME QUESTIONS RAISED
- PART I REWORKING NATURAL LAW
- PART II INTELLECT AND MORALITY
- PART III EPICUREANS AND EGOISTS
- Pierre Gassendi
- Pierre Nicole
- Bernard Mandeville
- John Gay
- Claude Adrien Helvétius
- Paul Henri Thiry, Baron d'Holbach
- William Paley
- Jeremy Bentham
- PART IV AUTONOMY AND RESPONSIBILITY
- Supplemental Bibliography
Summary
Introduction
Born in Rotterdam in 1670, Bernard de Mandeville (he dropped the “de” in later life) studied philosophy at Leyden and then turned to medicine, which he practiced for some years. Travels took him to England. He liked that country, stayed, learned the language, married, and made his reputation there. Although his books were extremely successful and his fame considerable, little is known about the details of his life, but he seems to have had some connections with the nobility and to have been good company. He died in 1733.
Mandeville is best known for one work. The Fable of the Bees. The book began as a poem called “The Grumbling Hive: or, Knaves Turned Honest,” which was first peddled in the streets in 1705 as a little pamphlet. The poem tells of a prosperous beehive, with a government neither tyrannical nor democratic, with developed sciences, industries, armies, and arts.
Vast numbers thronged the fruitful hive.
Yet those vast numbers made them thrive;
Millions endeavoring to supply
Each other's lust and vanity …
Some of the bees were openly crooked – the forgers, pimps, thieves, and quacks – but there were cheats secretly at work in every trade, calling, and profession.
Justice herself, famed for fair dealing
By blindness had not lost her feeling,
Her left hand, which the scales should hold,
Had often dropped them, bribed with gold …
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- Information
- Moral Philosophy from Montaigne to Kant , pp. 388 - 398Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2002