Bernard Mandeville 1670 – 1733

Bernard Mandeville was a Dutch-born English physician, satirist, and philosopher whose Fable of the Bees scandalized eighteenth-century moralists by arguing that the private vices of pride, vanity, and self-interest are precisely what produce the public benefits of a flourishing commercial society. His subtitle, Private Vices, Public Benefits, became one of the most contested and influential formulae of the early Enlightenment, and his analysis prepared the way for Adam Smith's account of the unintended consequences of self-interested action. His writings provoked Hutcheson, Berkeley, and Hume to extended response.