[Ideas in Context 01] • The Enlightenment's Fable

The apprehension of society as an aggregation of self-interested individuals, connected only by envy, competition, and exploitation, was first systematically articulated during the European Enlightenment. The Enlightenments bFable examines the challenge offered to traditions of morality and social understanding by Bernard Mandeville, whose infamous maxim bprivate vices, public benefits profoundly disturbed his contemporaries, and whose Fable of the bees influenced David Hume, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Adam Smith and Immanuel Kant.