Bernard Mandeville and the “Judicious Reader”

Abstract

Ever since the publication of the Fable of the Bees and its formulaic equation of private vices with public benefits, Mandeville has generally been regarded as an author who revelled in paradox; a master of irony and sarcasm. Whether he really meant to give free rein to private vices – the “laissez faire” of unbridled capitalism –, whether he did think that the poor should not be given access to education, or that prostitution should be institutionalised, is still a matter of discussion. If Mandeville’s provocative use of paradoxes has been the object of ample academic scrutiny, the author-reader relationship that results from this paradoxical mode of writing has generally been overlooked. In the present article, I wish to show that Mandeville is less interested in convincing the readers of the validity of his moral – or immoral – stances (whatever they may be) than in guiding them through the uncertain and disconcerting maze of critical thinking and self-knowledge.

Keywords

• reader-response. authorship. critical thinking. self-knowledge. indeterminacy. paradox.