QuestionsWhat is a just society?Private vices, public benefits
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Private vices, public benefits

The Fable of the Bees; private vices, public benefits

Bernard Mandeville 1670 · 1733A prosperous society lives on the passions morality condemns: private vices, public benefits.
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What it claims

A just society protects everyone's freedom to pursue his interests, within the limits of the law, rather than imposing virtue by force.

Why

The passions morality condemns put thousands to work: without them the hive grows poor; it is for the law to frame them.

In short

"Private vices, public benefits" is an argument by Bernard Mandeville (The Fable of the Bees, 1714) on the question "What is a just society?" (answer: liberties). Its claim: A just society protects everyone's freedom to pursue his interests, within the limits of the law, rather than imposing virtue by force. According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the argument is valid only if one grants a premise the author leaves unstated (P4). AskPhilosophy presents 3 objections, 1 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

The Fable of the Bees, 1714
Valid with an implicit premise

In 1705 Mandeville published a short poem: a prosperous hive, full of fraud, luxury and pride. One day the bees decide to become honest. The result is a disaster: trade collapses and the hive empties. The poem caused a scandal, for it seemed to say that morality impoverishes. Mandeville answers that his aim is to show what prosperity costs in passions, not to praise vice. From this comes an idea of justice: instead of asking people to be saints, a society lets each pursue his interests and only sets limits by law.

P1A society's prosperity comes from the passions that morality condemns: vanity, luxury, pride, greed. Each vice puts thousands to work.
P2Removing these passions to keep only virtue would ruin trade and impoverish everyone: virtue alone cannot make a nation live in plenty.
P3Vice becomes useful only if it is pruned and bound by justice, like a vine: left alone it gives only wood, pruned it gives fruit. Laws, not sermons, must therefore frame the passions.
P4 · implicit premiseA just society is one from which all its members benefit most. It therefore lets each pursue his private interest, protected by law, rather than demanding a virtue that almost no one has.
Therefore a just society protects everyone's freedom to pursue his interests, within the limits of the law, rather than imposing virtue by force.

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.
Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
Without the implicit premise: Without P4, the computer finds a case where passions create wealth and a just society nonetheless imposes moderation, because it judges that prosperity is not the only good to be shared.
With P4 the argument is valid. Without P4, Mandeville shows that passions produce benefits, but not that justice consists in letting them act. He himself says that vices must be bound by justice: his thesis is that prosperity comes from well-framed passions, not from freedom without rules.
Analogy. A fire in a fireplace warms the house; without a hearth it burns it down. We do not abolish fire: we build the hearth.

Objections

3

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

Francis Hutcheson 1726 · attacks premise 1

Mandeville counts as virtue only the struggle against one's inclinations, and concludes that every good act is mixed with selfishness. But we approve of disinterested benevolence, and we see it in people who have nothing to gain from it. Prosperity can come from real social affection.

no reply
We have not yet found a direct reply by Mandeville in the texts.
The debate goes on (our summary) Hutcheson replied to Mandeville in Mandeville's lifetime, but we found no reply from Mandeville to these letters. The core disagreement: do humans act mainly from self-love, or also from real benevolence?
Jean-Jacques Rousseau 1755 · attacks premise 1

Rousseau salutes Mandeville's lucidity, but reproaches him for not seeing that pity, a natural feeling, is the source of all the social virtues he denies to men. Generosity, clemency, benevolence and friendship are forms of it. Without it, he says, men would be monsters.

no reply
No reply possible: objection raised in 1755, after the author's death (1733).
The debate goes on (our summary) Mandeville died in 1733, twenty-two years before the Discourse. In the Fable, however, he discusses pity himself, calling it a frailty of our nature, like anger or fear. Rousseau sees it, on the contrary, as the foundation of morality.
Adam Smith 1759 · attacks premise 4

Smith rejects Mandeville's "licentious system", which turns every wish to please others into mere vanity. He keeps, however, the idea that private interests can serve the public: the market does not need vicious men, but people who trade and are held by justice and sympathy.

a defender replies
Friedrich Hayek defender of the argument · 1966
Summary: in a 1966 lecture, Hayek argues that Mandeville's contribution is not the praise of vice. It is an idea: a useful order can grow little by little from the actions of many people, without anyone having designed it.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Smith and Mandeville agree that private interest can serve the public. They differ on morals: is vice necessary (Mandeville) or can self-interest remain virtuous (Smith)? The debate on the nature of human motivation remains open.