Mandeville, Bernard

Bernard Mandeville (1670-1733) was a philosopher, political economist, and satirist, best known for The Fable of the Bees, or Private Vices, Public Benefits. Mandeville's views of human nature were seen by his critics as cynical and degrading, but he endeavored to show that all social laws are the crystallized results of selfish aggrandizement and protective alliances among the weak. His A Letter to Dion was "occasioned by his Book Called Alciphron, or the Minute Philosopher."