Mandeville's father is a doctor. He goes to the erasmus school and reads lots of erasmus as a young man. His great intellectual, pierre bale, was teaching just down the road in the illustrious academy. Mandeville clearly imbibes these sort of strange ideas. When he goes on to university, he carries with him the inheritance of bale. And he quotes, he plagiarizes blebe plagiarizes him. The paradox that mandeville likes to rely on: atheists are capable of forming a good society - better than christians.
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Bernard Mandeville (1670-1733) and his critique of the economy as he found it in London, where private vices were condemned without acknowledging their public benefit. In his poem The Grumbling Hive (1705), he presented an allegory in which the economy collapsed once knavish bees turned honest. When republished with a commentary, The Fable of the Bees was seen as a scandalous attack on Christian values and Mandeville was recommended for prosecution for his tendency to corrupt all morals. He kept writing, and his ideas went on to influence David Hume and Adam Smith, as well as Keynes and Hayek.
With
David Wootton
Anniversary Professor of History at the University of York
Helen Paul
Lecturer in Economics and Economic History at the University of Southampton
And
John Callanan
Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at King’s College London
Producer: Simon Tillotson