Man-Devil: The Mind and Times of Bernard Mandeville, the Wickedest Man in Europe

About the Book

A lively and provocative account of Bernard Mandeville and the work that scandalised and appalled his contemporaries and made him one of the most influential thinkers of the eighteenth century.

In 1714, doctor, philosopher and writer Bernard Mandeville published The Fable of the Bees, a humorous tale in which a prosperous hive full of greedy and licentious bees trade their vices for virtues and immediately fall into economic and societal collapse. Outrage among the reading public followed; philosophers took up their pens to refute what they saw as the fable's central assertion. How could it be that an immoral community thrived but the introduction of morality caused it to crash and burn? In Man-Devil, John Callanan examines Mandeville and his famous fable, showing how its contentious claim that vice was essential to the economic flourishing of any society formed part of Mandeville's overall theory of human nature. Mandeville, Callanan argues, was perfectly suited to analyse and satirise the emerging phenomenon of modern society and reveal the gap between its self-image and its reality.

Callanan shows that Mandeville's thinking was informed by his medical training and his innovative approach to the treatment of illness with both physiological and psychological components. Through incisive and controversial analyses of sexual mores, gender inequality, economic structures, and political ideology, Mandeville sought to provide a naturalistic account of human behaviour one that put humans in close continuity with animals. Aware that his fellow human beings might find this offensive, he cloaked his theories in fables, poems, anecdotes, and humorous stories. Mandeville mastered irony precisely for the purpose of making us aware of uncomfortable aspects of our deepest natures aspects that we still struggle to acknowledge today.

About the Author :

John Callanan is reader in the history of philosophy, Department of Philosophy, at King's College London. He is the author of Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals and the coeditor of Kant and Animals.

Review :
"Entertaining. . . .[Callanan] has convinced me that exposing Mandeville and his writings to a new generation of readers is indeed worthwhile."---Howard Davies, Literary Review "John Callanan’s Man-Devil: The Mind and Times of Bernard Mandeville, the Wickedest Man in Europe (Princeton University Press) is by far the best discussion we have of this paradoxical, and immensely influential thinker, and everyone interested in the history of moral, social, or economic theorising should read it."---David Wootton, Engelsberg Ideas "[A] superb book."---Joseph Hone, History Today "Callanan, a philosopher at King’s College, London, has produced an engaging, expansive and effortlessly erudite study of a man who today too few people know. Man-Devil is a fascinating and welcome corrective, not least because Bernard Mandeville was amongst the first to argue that we don’t really know ourselves."---Peter West, The Critic "A book-length exploration of the man’s ‘life and mind’ has the potential to shed useful light on his ideas and their place in intellectual history, and Callanan’s book delivers."---Robert Rich, Montreal Review "The ambition of Callanan’s book is to take Mandeville seriously as a thinker. Notwithstanding all his satire and jokes, the book claims that Mandeville put forward a unified worldview, one that we ignore at our peril. . . . Man-Devil does an excellent job of situating Mandeville in his cultural milieu."---Max Skjönsberg, Law & Liberty "Callanan . . . adds detail and nuance to the typically surface-level treatment of Mandeville’s intellectual contributions and influence. The book masterfully retells the timeline of Mandeville’s personal and professional life, surveys Mandeville’s complex ideas across his full body of written and published works, and, lastly, contextualizes Mandeville as not only a formidable intellectual in his time, but among the most pioneering thinkers of economics and social philosophy. In short, Mandeville’s thought is far more systematically consistent and applicable than common historic treatments today recognize or give credit."---Daniel J. D’Amico, The Independent Review "Man-Devil is exceptionally pleasant to read. Mandeville is allowed to speak, often at some length, and he makes excellent company – Callanan evidently has affection for his subject, though affection that does not preclude him, or us, being puzzled or occasionally disappointed by Mandeville. The book is a model of the sympathetic reconstruction of a philosophical system as a whole, one that is all the more compelling given that compiling a systematic treatise is a project Mandeville would himself have disavowed. The rich and varied chapters. . . stay close to Mandeville’s texts and arguments. The reader is perched just above his shoulder in his study, looking down at the words on the page, glancing up occasionally to catch glimpses out the window of his great muse, the sprawling urban environment beyond."---Jonathan Egid, Times Literary Supplement