Everything about Bernard De Mandeville totally explained
Bernard Mandeville, or
Bernard de Mandeville (
1670 –
1733), was a
philosopher, political
economist and
satirist. Born in the Netherlands, he lived most of his life in
England and used English for most of his published works. He became famous (or infamous) for
The Fable of the Bees.
Life
He was born on November 15, 1670, at
Rotterdam in the Netherlands, where his father was a prominent
physician. On leaving the
Erasmus school at
Rotterdam he showed his ability by an
Oratio scholastica de medicina (1685), and at
Leiden University in 1689 he produced the thesis
De brutorum operationibus, in which he advocated the
Cartesian theory of
automatism among animals. In 1691 he took his medical degree, pronouncing an inaugural disputation,
De chylosi vitiata. He moved to England to learn the language, and succeeded so remarkably that many refused to believe he was a foreigner. His father had been banished from Rotterdam in 1693 for involvement in the Costerman tax riots in 1690; Bernard himself may well have been involved.
As a physician he was well respected and his literary works paid off very well. His conversational abilities won him the friendship of
Lord Macclesfield (chief justice 1710-1718), who introduced him to
Joseph Addison, described by Mandeville as "a parson in a tye-wig." He died of
influenza on
January 21 1733 at
Hackney.
There is a surviving image of Mandeville and many details of his life still have to be researched. The name Mandeville suggests a French origin, but his ancestors had lived in the Netherlands since at least the
16th century. There is no known connection between him and the
14th century Sir John Mandeville.
Fable of the Bees
In 1705 he published a longer poem under the title
The Grumbling Hive, or Knaves Turn'd Honest (two hundred
doggerel couplets). In 1714 it was republished as an integral part of the
Fable of the Bees: or, Private Vices, Publick Benefits, consisting of a prose commentary, called
Remarks, and an essay,
An Enquiry into the Origin of Moral Virtue. In 1723 a later edition appeared, including
An Essay on Charity and Charity Schools, and
A Search into the Nature of Society. It was vigorously combated by, among others,
Bishop Berkeley and
William Law, author of
The Serious Call, and in 1729 was made the subject of a prosecution for its immoral tendency. This essay criticized the charity schools, designed to educate the poor and in doing so, instill virtue in them. Mandeville disagreed with this idea, that education adds virtue because he didn't believe that evil desires existed only in the poor but rather he saw the educated and wealthy as much more crafty. Mandeville also believed that educating the poor increased their desires for material things, which defeated the purpose of the school and made it more difficult to provide for them.
The book was primarily written as a political
satire on the state of England in 1705, when the
Tories were accusing
John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough and the ministry of advocating the
War of the Spanish Succession for personal reasons. In
The Grumbling Hive Mandeville describes a thriving bee community until many of the bees decide to seek honesty and virtue. Without their desire for personal gain the colony loses the hive, thus concluding that without private vices there exists no public benefit. The edition of 1723 was presented as a nuisance by the Grand Jury of
Middlesex, was denounced in the
London Journal by "Theophilus Philo-Britannus," and attacked by many writers, notably by the
Reverend of
St. Andrew's Archibald Campbell (1691-1756) in his
Aretelogia (published as his own by
Alexander Innes in 1728; afterwards by Campbell, under his own name, in 1733, as
Enquiry into the Original of Moral Virtue). The
Fable was reprinted in 1729, a ninth edition appeared in 1755, and it has often been reprinted in more recent times. Berkeley attacked it in the second dialogue of the
Alciphron (1732) and
John Brown criticized him in his
Essay upon Shaftesbury's Characteristics (1751).
Ideas
Mandeville's philosophy gave great offence at the time, and has always been stigmatized as false, cynical and degrading. His main thesis is that the actions of men can't be divided into lower and higher. The higher life of man is a mere fiction introduced by philosophers and rulers to simplify
government and the relations of
society. In fact,
virtue (which he defined as "every performance by which man, contrary to the impulse of nature, should endeavour the benefit of others, or the conquest of his own passions, out of a
rational ambition of being good") is actually detrimental to the
state in its commercial and intellectual progress. This is because it's the
vices (for example, the self-regarding actions of men) which alone, by means of inventions and the circulation of
capital in connection with luxurious living, stimulate society into action and progress.
Private vice, public benefit
Mandeville arrives at a very contemporaneously vile conclusion: vice as a necessary condition for economic prosperity. His viewpoint is more severe when juxtaposed to
Adam Smith's. Both Smith and Mandeville believed that individuals’ collective actions bring about a public benefit . However, what sets his philosophy apart from Smith’s is his catalyst to that public benefit. Smith believed in a virtuous self-interest which results in invisible cooperation. For the most part, Smith saw no need for a guide to garner that public benefit. On the other hand, Mandeville believed it was vicious greed which led to invisible cooperation if properly channeled. Mandeville’s qualification of proper channeling further parts his philosophy with Smith’s
laissez-faire attitude. Essentially, Mandeville called for politicians to ensure that the passions of man would result in a public benefit. It was his stated belief in the
Fable of the Bees that "Private Vices by the dextrous Management of a skilful Politician may be turned into Publick Benefits” (Mandeville, 369).
In the
Fable he shows a society possessed of all the virtues "blest with content and honesty," falling into apathy and utterly paralyzed. The absence of
self-love (cf.
Hobbes) is the death of progress. The so-called higher virtues are mere
hypocrisy, and arise from the selfish desire to be superior to the brutes. "The moral virtues are the political offspring which flattery begot upon pride." Similarly he arrives at the great
paradox that "private vices are public benefits."
Among other things, Mandeville argues that the basest and vilest behaviors produce positive economic effects. A
libertine, for example, is a vicious character, and yet his spending will employ tailors, servants, perfumers, cooks, and distressed women. These persons, in turn, will employ bakers, carpenters, and the like. Therefore, the rapaciousness and violence of the base passions of the libertine benefit society in general. Similar satirical arguments were made by the
Restoration and Augustan satirists.
The Division of Labour
Mandeville was an early describer of the
Division of labour, and
Adam Smith makes use of some of his examples. Mandeville says:
» But if one will wholly apply himself to the making of Bows and Arrows, whilst another provides Food, a third builds Huts, a fourth makes Garments, and a fifth Utensils, they not only become useful to one another, but the Callings and Employments themselves will in the same Number of Years receive much greater Improvements, than if all had been promiscuously follow’d by every one of the Five...
» In Watch-making, which is come to a higher degree of Perfection, than it would have been arrived at yet, if the whole had always remain’d the Employment of one Person; and I'm persuaded, that even the Plenty we've of Clocks and Watches, as well as the Exactness and Beauty they may be made of, are chiefly owing to the Division that has been made of that Art into many Branches. (
The Fable of the Bees, Volume two).
Influence
While the author probably had no intention of subverting
morality, his views of
human nature were certainly cynical and degrading. Another of his works,
A Search into the Nature of Society (1723), appended to the later versions of the
Fable, also startled the public mind, which his last works,
Free Thoughts on Religion (1720) and
An Enquiry into the Origin of Honour and the Usefulness of Christianity (1732) did little to reassure. The work in which he approximates most nearly to modern views is his account of the origin of society. His
a priori theories should be compared with
Henry Maine's historical inquiries (
Ancient Law). He endeavours to show that all social laws are the crystallized results of selfish aggrandizement and protective alliances among the weak. Denying any form of moral sense or
conscience, he regards all the social virtues as evolved from the instinct for
self-preservation, the give-and-take arrangements between the partners in a defensive and offensive alliance, and the feelings of pride and vanity artificially fed by politicians, as an antidote to dissension and chaos.
Mandeville's ironic paradoxes are interesting mainly as a criticism of the "amiable" idealism of
Shaftesbury, and in comparison with the serious egoistic systems of Hobbes and
Helvétius. It is mere prejudice to deny that Mandeville had considerable philosophic insight; at the same time he was mainly negative or critical, and, as he himself said, he was writing for "the entertainment of people of knowledge and education." He can be said to have removed obstacles for the coming
utilitarianism.
Works
- Typhon: a Burlesque Poem (1704)
- Aesop Dress'd, or a Collection of Fables writ in Familiar Verse (1704)
- The Planter's Charity (1704)
- The Virgin Unmasked (1709, 1724, 1731, 1742), a work in which, the coarser side of his nature is prominent
- A Treatise of the Hypochondriack and Hysterick Passions (1711, 1715, 1730 (the issue of 1730 was entitled A Treatise of the Hypochondriack and Hysterick Diseases)) admired by Johnson (Mandeville here protests against speculative therapeutics, and advances fanciful theories of his own about animal spirits in connection with "stomachic ferment": he shows a knowledge of Locke's methods, and an admiration for Sydenham)
- The Fable of the Bees (1714)
- The Mischiefs that Ought Justly to be Apprehended from a Whig-Government (1714)
- Free Thoughts on Religion, the Church, and National Happiness (1720, 1721, 1723, 1729)
- A Modest Defence of Publick Stews (1724)
- An Enquiry into the Causes of the Frequent Executions at Tyburn (1725)
- An Enquiry into the Origin of Honour, and the Usefulness of Christianity in War (1732)
Other works attributed, wrongly, to him are The World Unmasked (1736) and Zoologia medicinalis hibernica (1744).
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