Bernard Mandeville as a Writer: A Bibliographical and Critical Overview of His Miscellaneous Works
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This essay seeks to contribute to a better understanding of Bernard Mandeville (1670-1733) as a writer and thinker emerging from the bustle and din of early eighteenth-century British society, when the values attached to free commerce began to acquire ascendancy over traditional values. As discussions of Mandeville generally tend to focus largely on The Fable of the Bees, our claim to novelty rests on the fact that we place this representative work in the context of other works known to have been written by him, such as Free Thoughts on Religion, the Church, and National Happiness. An enlarged view of Mandeville’s writings may convince us of the sincerity and seriousness of his brand of enlightenment project. Rather than being a particularly “pernicious” philosophy, as Adam Smith alleged, what he presents is an unflattering anatomy of the selfish passions at the heart of human society. Humans can never hope to rid themselves of their sundry vices, however much they may pretend to have done so. The public benefit of material prosperity coupled with private vices can surely be celebrated on its own terms, but it cannot quite whitewash the inherent corruption of human nature. Instead of being “inconsistent,” as David Hume asserted, it is entirely consistent on Mandeville’s part to retain moral terms in describing the social mechanism of commerce. The cacophony breaking out in the Fable from the clash of a strict “Calvinist” premise of human depravity with the impersonal amorality of the market, if anything, emanates, in Mandeville’s own words, from a “severe and exalted Morality” marvelling at the “unsearchable Providence” that welds material prosperity with moral pollution.
Abstract
This essay seeks to contribute to a better understanding of Bernard Mandeville (1670-1733) as a writer and thinker emerging from the bustle and din of early eighteenth-century British society, when the values attached to free commerce began to acquire ascendancy over traditional values. As discussions of Mandeville generally tend to focus largely on The Fable of the Bees, our claim to novelty rests on the fact that we place this representative work in the context of other works known to have been written by him, such as Free Thoughts on Religion, the Church, and National Happiness. An enlarged view of Mandeville’s writings may convince us of the sincerity and seriousness of his brand of enlightenment project. Rather than being a particularly “pernicious” philosophy, as Adam Smith alleged, what he presents is an unflattering anatomy of the selfish passions at the heart of human society. Humans can never hope to rid themselves of their sundry vices, however much they may pretend to have done so. The public benefit of material prosperity coupled with private vices can surely be celebrated on its own terms, but it cannot quite whitewash the inherent corruption of human nature. Instead of being “inconsistent,” as David Hume asserted, it is entirely consistent on Mandeville’s part to retain moral terms in describing the social mechanism of commerce. The cacophony breaking out in the Fable from the clash of a strict “Calvinist” premise of human depravity with the impersonal amorality of the market, if anything, emanates, in Mandeville’s own words, from a “severe and exalted Morality” marvelling at the “unsearchable Providence” that welds material prosperity with moral pollution.
참고문헌 (33)
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