Mandeville--A Normative Egoist

 

I believe that Bernard Mandeville was a proponent of psychological egoism, and I am wondering if he is a normative egoist, but the definitive evidence is not there for me yet, if ever. Clearly, he thought people committed many sins, and were vicious in many ways openly or in disguise, while hypocritically presenting themselves to the public as noble, pious, and decent.

 

Clearly too he felt that people pursuing self-interest, whether selfishly or recklessly, whether legally or illegally, their worldly pursuit of wealth, goods and pleasure, no matter what motivated them, did lead to England being a rich, powerful trading nation, and that seemed for Mandeville to constitute the highest good. Is he some strange consequentialist ethicist, that even mass evil or selfish deeds could lead to national prosperity and full employment, economic conditions that were extremely desirable? Can a good product come from a bad source?

 

One would surely doubt it, but in the New Testament it is pointed out that God utilizes people to achieve an unstated, unknow end of His, conceivably a chain of bad deeds or neutral deeds executed by immoral or amoral people, which  would turn out beneficial in the end. Mandeville does have a point that noble, selfless, idealistic, self-sacrificing saints do not grow the economy. Mandeville may not care what motivates the people’s actions and activity, as long as it leads to the improved, richer social consequence that he advocates.

 

I have long argued that material well-being, at say middle class or upper middle class, is the economic and wealth baseline for constructing a society of self-individuators, and, in addition to a fairly high per capita level of prosperity, this civilized state requires environmental law and order, peace, tolerance, live-and-let live relations between neighbor, liberty, capitalism and lived religious faith to inspire the young to self-realize. It may be that Mandeville believed that being a modern, urban, industrial, trading, capitalist nation gave people their best chance, and that would not be too far removed from the narrative that Eric Hoffer and I are supporting.

 

Let me quote Phillip Harth, who wrote the introduction to Mandeville’s The Fable Of The Bees, Pages 19 and 20: “There are really two different kinds of vice which Mandeville considers inseparable from national prosperity. The first kind, which he describes by the general term ‘fraud’, receives the greatest emphasis in The Grumbling Hive. Most of the vices described there are such ‘cheats’ as robbery, swindling, extortion, bribery, embezzlement, and other ways of plundering money which, when detected, are regarded as violations of the law. So prevalent is this kind of vice among the bees, that the appearance of the single virtue opposed to it, honesty, is sufficient to rid the hive of its evils, but also its prosperity, since the elimination of so many occupations concerned with the prevention or punishment of dishonesty gives rise to unemployment and subsequent emigration.”

 

My response: Right off the bat Mandeville seems correct in urging that full employment and prosperity, though not positive human rights as the Left suggests, but they are highly desirable social conditions, and Mandeville is a wise and kind thinker, to wish for people worldly wealth, fun and prosperity. Totalitarian states are replete with stories of the impoverished, hungry, suffering, exploited masses, living their miserable stratified lives, lacking prosperity and liberty to do what they need to do to be well and live well. It is ethically admirable for Mandeville to highlight the imperative need for societal prosperity so early in Western history.

 

Let us continue: “By the time he published The Fable of the Bees, however, Mandeville seems to have come to consider such crimes as unavoidable evils which accompany prosperity without necessarily promoting it. (The traditionalists, altruists and Christians that accused Mandeville of being evil incarnate and a cynical promoter of vice and evil, were off base. More likely, he regarded societal vice as a necessary evil to reach the societal goal of prosperity that he preached for. Whether he regarded the “sinful” behaviors that Christians of the time rebuked and censored as vicious and wicked, or whether he actually accepted their label of said behaviors as vicious and wicked, he seemed to have utilized their labels of good or evil behavior observed by his peers, whether he believed in these definitions or not. I am still exploring that puzzle,). Only in Remark G does he discuss the economic advantages of dishonesty, when he argues that even highwayman encourage trade by spending lavishly what they have stolen. More often he alludes to such vices as ‘Inconveniences’ which are present in every ‘great and flourishing Nation’. (It could be that as humans begin to become more civilized, more modern, more rich, that their growing richer and more powerful is accompanied by plenty of sinning and vices, simply because they do not know how to lead virtuous lives. ALSO, I admire his goals of each nation being prosperous, rich and with a surplus trade balance, but I would suggest that Mandeville’s desired social arrangement could be gained by lives of virtue lived by most people—whether their virtue is altruist, Christian virtue or Randian selfish virtue. There is no need for all to be vicious, so living under altruist or egoist ethics for a nation to become rich, but that is how the people act as a byproduct of getting rich, urban and powerful as a modern people. Their viciousness and the simultaneous arrival on the scene of much urban prosperity, and the rise of a powerful English state could be correlation that Mandeville mistook as a solid cause and effect thesis—that is without much viciousness, no national prosperity will occur.)

 

So in Remark A he shows that such socially undesirable occupations as a followed by cardsharpers, pickpockets, and counterfeiters are inevitable in a society large enough to include the lazy and the fickle varied enough to provide such people with a dishonest livelihood, But the consequences need not be anarchy. Even in The Grumbling Hive ‘Vice is beneficial found’ only ‘When it by Justice lopt, and bound,’ Let the laws be vigorously enforced and crimes punished with alacrity, Mandeville urges, but do not dream of eradicating the drones to be found in every flourishing hive.  Such loathsome vices, he explains in the preface to the Fable, are like the dirt and litter that filled the streets of eighteenth-century London. Wise men will be such inconveniences  cheerfully, for ‘when once they come to consider, that what offends them is the result of the Plenty, if they have any Concern in its Welfare, they will hardly ever wish to see the streets of it less dirty,’ “

 

My response: It seems as if Mandeville wisely tolerates or at least allows legal vices to be enjoyed by an urban population, so that the national goal of prosperity can be acquired. When vice turns criminal, then it is to be obviated, prosecuted and punished.

There seems to be a principle of ethical moderation at work here: Modest or moderate vice enjoyment is harmless or not too harmful and may even desirable as long as lawlessness, chaos, rampant crime and negative anarchy are now unleashed.

 

One could also infer that Mandeville would endorse moderation of virtue, curbing excess altruistic, puritanical and ascetic saintly excesses depriving the people of worldly pleasure, materialism and material wealth to ease  their suffering in this secular world.

 

Mandeville may be a kind of unstated ethical moderate, urging the people to not be too self-sacrificing and self-denying or too altruistic and otherworldly, but he is also urging them not to be too self-indulgent giving into any urge or temptation to commit crimes on others for their immediate personal pleasure and profit.

 

I think as I go deeper into his works and the commentaries about him from thinkers, many of my speculations about Mandevilee will be made clear, whether confirmed or disconfirmed.

 

The moral reformers of his day were violently shocked by his irreverent, satirical hostility to their traditional ethical revival that they were promoting. He was not really for vice so much as it was litter and dirt on the street of the city symbolizing that times were changing and as traditional culture, morality and religion broke down to make way for a more modern economic and political structures, with their accompany new morality, faith and more urban society, temporary excess vice might be a side product to that modernization project that Mandeville recognized as unfolding and he was doing his part to nudge it along.