Mandeville, Bernard (1670–1733)

Bernard Mandeville was Dutch and English. One of the first modern thinkers to address the relationship between morals and economics, Mandeville is renown for his claim that a prosperous society could be brought about only by self-interested, not virtuous, individuals. Born in or near Rotterdam and trained in medicine at the University of Leiden, Mandeville emigrated to England in the last decade of the 17th century. His thesis, that private vices generate public benefits, first appeared in his poem, “The Grumbling [Page 1322]Hive: Or Knaves Turn'd Honest,” published in 1705. The poem was reissued, in 1714, as The Fable of the Bees and included an essay on the origin of morals and a series of additional remarks on the poem. With another edition of 1723, ...