Mandeville's Dutch Background. How Important Was It in Shaping His Intellectual, Religious and Political Views?
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Jonathan Israel (Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton) Mandeville's Dutch Background. How important was it in shaping his intellectual, religious and political views? Mandeville continued to read in Dutch, as well as French and Latin, whilst working as a physician in London and among other authors cited Aitzema, van Dale and Bayle in his English writings. He was also given to providing Dutch examples to underline some of his points. He thought it hard, for example, to ' name a city better govern'd than that of Amsterdam ' not least owing to the lack of authority allowed to preachers. The Dutch Revolt against Spain and Dutch economic success were also pointed to by Mandeville as valuable exempla for others. This raises the question of how important Mandeville's background was for understanding his general outlook and views and the question of his relationship to Spinoza and Bayle. Sir Malcolm Jack Men become sociable, by living together in Society: re-assessing Mandeville’s social theory Mandeville’s analysis of the origin and nature of society is a central concern of his writing and is prominent in both parts of the Fable of the Bees, as well as in his other works. In the first part of the Fable of the Bees, Mandeville’s emphasis is on developing a passionate theory of man in society, greatly influenced by his reading of French sceptical literature, mediated through his mentor, Pierre Bayle. That analytical tradition provided a psychological theory of man as an egotistical creature pursuing his need for recognition, respect and pre- eminence as much as one who must fight for survival in the Hobbesian state of nature. Mandeville distils and uses the central, sceptical notions of amour propre and amour de soi même to explain why men act in certain ways, including ways that may be labelled altruistic. This kind of analysis is made from first principles, although its principles are claimed to be derived from observation of the human condition. A second strand in the Mandevillean analysis is not fully developed until Part 2 of the Fable of the Bees. Here Mandeville becomes interested in the origin and progress of society, much in the mode that came to dominate Scottish Enlightenment thought in writers such as Adam Ferguson and Lord Monboddo. Mandeville’s treatment of the origin of language is particularly interesting in this context. While this “conjectural history” is alleged to be based on empirical observation, it can also be seen as a logical construct, a model which is used to explain the historical evolution of society from primitive barbarism to the polite, commercial refinement of eighteenth-century Europe. In this paper I will explore the nature and meaning of Mandeville’s different focuses on the nature and origin of society and consider in what ways they contribute to the great eighteenth-century debate about progress. The two strands of his thought may be seen as a link between the sceptical literature of seventeenth century France and the eighteenth- century conjectural history of the Scottish Enlightenment. I hope by this re-assessment to show the central importance that he played in the development of eighteenth-century social theories which ultimately underlay the emergence of modern, social science. Alessandro Chiessi – University of Bologna Humorism a posteriori: Fables and dialogues as a Method in Mandeville’s thought Reading The Fable of the Bees and the other writings of Bernard Mandeville, it is possible to find a lot of different literary genres, spacing from fables and poems to dialogues and essays, through pamphlet and treatises. In this paper I would show how Mandeville’s literary experimentalism seems to be the consequence of an epistemological aim: the objectification of the case study. Taking seriously Mandeville’s statements about the “Reader’s Diversion” (Fable of the Bees) in a “Good Humor’d manner” (Letter to Dion), it is possible to see an explicit aim with an explicit method, which brings to another purpose: the estrangement from themes and arguments described or, in other words, from the object analysed. Here, came out a particular outline of empiricism that, besides essays and treatises, uses also fables and dialogues to explain Human Nature and its expressions in society. Specifically, giving glimpse to the poetical writings, fables and burlesque poems are genres used for the estrangement and the objectification of their literary subjects. This purpose, in fables, is obtained with a neutral style and a humble theme, where the parallelism between animal and men creates a moral pattern, and so its objectification. On the other side, in burlesque poems, a trivial style utilised for describing epic themes, produces a stylistic and thematic mismatch, which, at the end, causes to the same estrangement and objectification. Mandeville achieves these similar effects, in dialogues, through the play and struggle of different point of view. Here the rhetoric strategy of characters shows their opposite positions and conflicting argumentations: so their distances. If fables and dialogues are specific instruments of an empirical method, why it is possible to talk about ‘Humorism a posteriori’? First of all, because good humour, diversion and amusement are the result of Mandeville’s stylistic choices, so coming after reading: a posteriori; secondly, because Humorism is the effect of figures of speech as irony and literary solutions as satire. In this perspective, Humorism can be considered an experimental method adopted for the empirical description of Human Nature. Andrea Branchi Courage and chastity in a commercial society Mandeville's point on male and female honour A central theme in Mandeville's writing is the analysis of contemporary rituals of polite sociability, of male and female codes of honourable behaviour. Concurring with those Continental writers who stressed the components of hypocrisy and modish deceit implicit in the tradition of civility, Mandeville sees the rules of honour and politeness as the progressive outcome of a spontaneous balance of selfish passions in forms compatible with refined commercial sociability. For the Dutch Doctor, human behaviour, in its apparent variety of motivations, can be traced back to the passion of self-love, its effects and the efforts carried out to control, hide and gratify it. The desire for praise is a constant property of human nature that assumes different shapes in different historical contexts. In this perspective Mandeville carefully distinguishes between the constant and universal mechanism of human passions and the forms it takes, that is between honour in a general sense, as a technique for reciprocal gratification, and the early 18th century British ideal of gentlemanliness, Modern Honour. The aim of this essay is to offer a survey of the uses developed by Mandeville of the notion of honour in his philosophical project, focusing on the role played by ‘Modern Honour’ in his conjectural account of the civilizing process. In particular, the issues of duelling and of the position and role of women in society are two parallel perspectives to look at Mandeville's provocative account of male and female 'points of honour'. Unlike his contemporaries, Mandeville does not consider the culture of honour and its most extreme expressions, such as the practice of duelling, simply as an absurd atavism that oddly survived in 18th century British polite society. His effort to explain the popularity of 'Modern Honour' plays an important role in his larger philosophical project of scientific, unprejudiced analysis of human nature. For Mandeville the vitality of duelling, especially among those polite gentlemen who are supposedly better equipped with moral and civic virtues, is proof that the true motivations of man’s behaviour are to be found in pride, vanity, and self-liking rather than in benevolence. The standards of female honour too, are a revealing perspective. The issue of women's role in society is for Mandeville a field that magnifies the incoherencies and hypocrisies of the ‘Moralists & Reformers’. The courtship rituals, the different forms of education allotted to men and women, the harsh reality of conjugal life, the profound inequality of women's condition, all this demonstrates how society is based not on rational ideals of virtue or on a supposed natural benevolence, but rather on a balance between selfish passions. Locating the history of male honour and female respectability in the perspective of his philosophical anthropology, Mandeville is able to show that the rituals of Modern Honour are an exemplary expression of that spontaneous, artificial order stemming out of a natural disposition of human passions. Béatrice Guion (Université de Strasbourg) The Fable of the Bees: proles sine matre? The motto chosen by Montesquieu in his captatio benevolentiæ for De l'esprit des lois could easily be applied to Mandeville's Fable of the Bees : from a literary point of view, the work is a mixture of genres. My premise is that formal choices are not only formal, but say something about Mandeville's intents, and are not without relevance as to the variegated interpretations given to the Fable. The first version, The Grumbling Hive, appears as a poem that can be inscribed within the satirical verse tradition, which was well represented in England at the turn of the 17th and the 18th centuries, and which assumes a political and social aim. The second version, whose title explicitly refers to the genre of the fable, adds to the social and political dimension a concern for moral unmasking, much in the manner both of La Fontaine's Fables, which Mandeville translated in English, and of the 17th century French Augustinian Moralists : it echoes the writings of French Moralists in the claim of « anatomizing the invisible part of man » (Remark N). It adds prose remarks, which can recall the remarks of Bayle's Dictionary.