Organizational Needs of Society as an Origin of Morality in Bernard Mandeville’s Ethics

Abstract

The paper analyses ethical views of Bernard Mandeville as an example of such an explanation of morality that considers moral norms to be an element of the complex system enabled human societies to maintain their internal order and external competitive ability. In ‘An Enquiry into the Origin of Moral Virtue’ (the part of the first volume of ‘The Fable of the Bees’) Mandeville derives moral beliefs from the rhetoric of politicians and moralists exploiting natural pride and natural shame. Besides he indicates some origins of morality that pertain to the sphere of pragmatic communication and can not be reduced to the direct influence of politicians and moralists. But they come into operation only after the ‘savage man’ has been broken and the ‘foundation of politics’ has been laid. In late works of Mandeville this simplistic and vulnerable picture turns into a more sophisticated conception of slow evolving of moral norms and psychological mechanisms through many inventions of men involved in horizontal and vertical social communications. Politicians and moralists play a significant part in this process, but only at the last stage. This enrichment makes irrelevant some criticisms leveled at Mandeville by David Hume. Hume maintains that Mandeville ‘represents all moral distinctions as the effect of artifice and education’ but the Mandevillian account of the evolution of good manners, honour, and moral virtue from the second volume of ‘The Fable of the Bees’ and ‘An Enquiry into the Origin of Honour, and the Usefulness of Christianity in War’ shows that it is not the case. Politicians and moralists just correct and reshape already existing patterns of behavior and contribute to the perpetuation of rules formed by pragmatic communicative strategies.