Bernard Mandeville

See also: Mandeville

Bernard Mandeville , or of Mandeville , born on November 15th 1670 with Rotterdam and dead the January 21st 1733 with Hackney, is a writer Dutch.

Before studied the Philosophy and the Medicine with the University of Leyde, Bernard Mandeville becomes doctor of medicine in 1691, and settles in 1693 in England for the remainder of his life.

He is known mainly for his poem the Fable of the bees , published first once in 1705 under the title The Grumbling Hive, gold Knaves Turn' D Honest and republished and explained in 1714/1723 under the title Fable off the Bees: however, Private Defects, Publick Benefits .

The Fable of the bees

Appeared in 1714/1723, the Fable of the bees is a delivers political of Bernard Mandeville. It made a second volume in of it 1729.

Its principal thesis is that the actions of the men cannot be separate in noble actions and cheap actions, and that the private defects contribute to the public property while altruistic actions can to actually harm him. For example, in the economic domain, he says that a libertine acts by defect, but that “ its prodigality gives work to tailors, servants, perfumers, cooks and loose women, who in their turn employ bakers, carpenters, etc ”. Thus the rapacity and the violence of the libertine benefit the company in general.

Mandeville advances that all the social laws result from the egoistic will from weak to be supported mutually while being protected from strongest.

Its theory (the private defect nourishes general prosperity) inspired many authors of which Adam Smith or Ayn Rand in the virtue of selfishness . Nevertheless, the theory of Mandeville is much stronger, it supports that a company cannot have at the same time moral and prosperity and that the defect, heard as a search for its own interest, is the condition of prosperity.

These positions violently shocked the opinion of its time and were fought by the majority of its contemporaries.

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