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Bernard Mandeville

British Empiricism · Europe · 1670 to 1733

Dutch-born doctor in London who argued that selfish desires, such as vanity and greed, drive trade and the wealth of a nation.

What it is

Bernard Mandeville (1670 to 1733) was an Anglo-Dutch physician, satirist and philosopher, born in Rotterdam. He studied philosophy and medicine at Leiden, then moved to England, where he lived most of his life and wrote in English. He became famous, and notorious, for The Fable of the Bees: Or, Private Vices, Publick Benefits.

The book argues that a prosperous society depends on the self-interested and even vicious passions of its members, such as vanity and the love of luxury. The idea outraged his contemporaries and later gave him a place in the history of economic thought. The Fable began as a poem of 1705 called The Grumbling Hive.

The main ideas

  • Private vices, public benefits. He argued that behaviour condemned as vicious, such as greed and vanity, can produce prosperity, and that a society made up only of the modest and thrifty would be poor.
  • Self-love. He held that "all passions centre in self-love", which led many to compare him with Hobbes. In a later volume he made a distinction between self-love and self-liking.
  • Doubt about reason. He questioned whether human conduct is governed by reason, and stressed the part played by passion and flattery.
  • The origin of virtue. He offered a speculative story in which the first lawgivers praised the dignity of human beings in order to make them put the public interest before their appetites.
  • What did he mean? Readers have taken him as a sceptic who exposes morality as a political trick, as a strict moralist who shows that most conduct falls short of virtue, and as a utilitarian who cares about consequences.

What it looks like in practice

Think of a shopping street that exists because many people want to look well-dressed and pay for it. Mandeville would say that the vanity behind the spending keeps tailors, weavers and shopkeepers in work, and he would ask whether a town without such vanity would be better or only poorer. This is an illustration of his line of questioning, not a passage from his writing.

Books and moments

  • The Grumbling Hive, or Knaves Turn'd Honest (1705) is the poem from which the Fable grew.
  • The Fable of the Bees: Or, Private Vices, Publick Benefits is his best-known and most controversial book.
  • An Enquiry into the Origin of Honour is a sequel that develops his ideas on self-liking.

Questions and criticism

  • Attacked in his time. Philosophers such as Butler and Hutcheson attacked the idea that all action can be reduced to self-love in the 1720s, and he may have drawn his distinction between self-love and self-liking in response.
  • Is he serious? Readers disagree about whether his stern definitions of virtue are meant seriously or are a satirical device.
  • Is vice really needed? It is fair to ask whether prosperity depends on vice, or only on people pursuing their interests within good laws.

Close neighbours

Thomas Hobbes is the thinker with whom he was often compared, and Francis Hutcheson, who is named among his critics, offers the opposite view that benevolence is the source of virtue. The page on Adam Smith shows a later thinker who also wrote about self-interest and prosperity.

Written by epchē in our own words, and checked against independent sources on 29 October 2026. The sources are listed below.

Who they connect to

Influenced

  • Adam Smith · Smith took up the thought that private gain can serve the public, and also argued against him. (scholars disagree about this link)
  • David Hume · Hume took up his view that customs and trade grow from desire and habit, not from plans. (scholars disagree about this link)

Other British Empiricism thinkers

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