Bernard Mandeville

Bernard Mandeville (1670 to 1733) was an Anglo-Dutch physician and philosopher, born in Rotterdam into a respected family of Dutch physicians, merchants and officials and educated at Leiden University. He won fame with The Fable of the Bees: Or, Private Vices, Publick Benefits, which argued that economic prosperity depends on harnessing self-interested and even vicious passions, an idea that outraged his contemporaries and earned him a place in the history of economic thought. The book ranges much more widely, exploring human nature, the passions and the origins of moral and social norms, and it influenced eighteenth-century thinkers including David Hume, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Adam Smith.