>>>>Dr. Kyle Harper: In the 18th century, the debate over the meaning of happiness,
deeply influenced by Stoic and Epicurean views of happiness: the one emphasizing virtue the
other emphasizing pleasure in the absence of pain, would become to be a central focus
of Enlightenment political thought. To appreciate the particular context of these debates though,
we need to consider a text that was published in 1705, an extraordinary short work that
would have an outsized influence, Bernard Mandeville's "Fable of the Bees". Mandeville
published this poem. He was a Dutch writer who was living in London, and in 1705 he published
this verse satire, which was meant as a commentary on the contemporary mood of politics in England.
In the midst of a quickly developing and growing economy and the kinds of moral anxiety that
this had created within English society, and Mandeville mocks this sort of, almost hypocrisy
of wealth combined with nervousness about wealth in the "Fable of the Bees". In the
fable he tells the story of a hive of bees. Now bees, going back to Aristotle and beyond,
have always been a sort of symbol for humans because bees are the most conspicuous social
insect. Bees are an amazing creature that live in hives together, that have an extraordinary
social life. That form together in large groups that cooperate in order to build their society,
their way of life, and so bees are a deeply resonant symbol across millennium of political
thought. And in the "Fable of the Bees" Mandeville imagines a hive of bees that begin to feel
guilty and so they pray to their God to have virtue, and when the bees get this virtue,
their society actually breaks down and their economy completely ceases to function. When
they develop virtue and leave behind their vices, their economy collapses, but they are
happy and they don't know any difference. Mandeville's message was however, that human
societies in order to function, in order to flourish, to achieve glorious things, depend
upon vice. And in fact, one of the subtitles of this text is public happiness and private
vice. Mandeville argues that human societies are built on self-interest and indeed, should
be built on self-interest. He offers an argument that resonates indeed with ancient texts,
that the virtues are in reality forms of self-interest, that they are created by society out of self-interest.
This should remind you very directly of the opening passages of Plato's "Republic", and
in particular the debates between Socrates on the one side and Thrasymachus and even
more importantly, Glaucon on the other. Thrasymachus argues that there is no such thing as justice,
that it's simply a word that's created by the stronger to allow them to dominate the
weaker. Glaucon takes up this case in an even more persuasive way and says there really
is no such thing as a kind of justice that is good in and of itself. Remember this distinction
from Plato's "Republic" something that is good in and of itself, and something that
is good simply for its consequences. Mandeville is picking up this argument that there is
only virtue because of its positive consequences, and in Glaucon's version he offers the fable
of the Ring of Gyges. And says that, imagine that there were a magic ring that you could
put on that would make you invisible and so you can behave however you wanted without
any kind of consequences. You then wouldn't behave, because you aren't really virtuous.
You only want to seem virtuous. And this distinction between real virtue for its own sake, and
a kind of virtue that is created or conventional is reborn in the 18th century, and Mandeville's
"Fable of the Bees" was a provocative satire that would fire this debate. That would challenge
those again, who wanted to say that virtue wasn't simply some form of self-interest.
And Mandeville's thought coalesced an idea that had its roots in fact, in the thought
of Hobbes and even of Locke. Locke's philosophy in particular, because he was the most important
political thinker of the 17th century, because he was so widely admired, because you don't
read his treatises on Government and think of them as cynical texts. Locke's philosophy
in particular was seen by many as a dangerous and radical challenge to traditional ideas
of moral virtue. There was the risk in Locke's philosophy that virtue was simply a form of
self-love, a form of self-interest, and Mandeville gave such provocative expression to this idea
that virtue isn't a good in itself, but simply something that is created for some other end,
that it is somehow itself utilitarian coalesced an argument that has its roots deep in the
ancient world in the Sophists, and was revived around the philosophies of Hobbes and Locke
and which would receive even more crystal expression in the 18th century. Mandeville's
"Fable of the Bees" by saying that vice was good, that humans should pursue their self-interest
and that the virtues were only a kind of hidden way of actually pursuing self-interest would
spark remarkable opposition and indeed, would inspire some of the most productive political
thought of the 18th century.