The fable of the Bees PDF Download

Author: Bernard de Mandeville
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 506

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Author: Bernard Mandeville
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Charity-schools
Languages : en
Pages : 554

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Author: Robin Douglass
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691219176
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
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.

Author: Bernard Mandeville
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Charity-schools
Languages : en
Pages : 524

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Author: Bernard Mandeville
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Charity-schools
Languages : en
Pages : 510

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Author: Bernard Mandeville
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Church history
Languages : en
Pages : 414

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Author: Bernard Mandeville
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Charity-schools
Languages : en
Pages : 500

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Author: Bernard Mandeville
Publisher: Hackett Publishing
ISBN: 9780872203747
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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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.

Author: George H. Smith
Publisher: Cato Institute
ISBN: 1944424407
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 134

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There is a well-worn image and phrase for libertarianism: ?atomized individualism.? This hobgoblin has spread so thoroughly that even some libertarians think their philosophy unreservedly supports private persons, whatever the situation, whatever their behavior. Smith?s Self-Interest and Social Order in Classical Liberalism, corrects this misrepresentation with careful intellectual surveys of Hume, Smith, Hobbes, Butler, Mandeville, and Hutcheson and their respective contributions to political philosophy.

Author: E. J. Hundert
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521619424
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
The apprehension of society as an aggregation of self-interested individuals is a dominant modern concern, but one first systematically articulated during the Enlightenment. This book approaches this problem from the perspective of the challenge offered to inherited traditions of morality and social understanding by Bernard Mandeville, whose infamous paradoxical maxim "private vices, public benefits" profoundly disturbed his contemporaries, while his The 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.