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Mandeville's Paradox
Mandeville's paradox is named after Bernard Mandeville (1670–1733), who posits that actions which may be qualified as vicious with regard to individuals have benefits for society as a whole. This is alluded to in the subtitle of his most famous work, '' The Fable of The Bees: or, Private Vices, Public Benefits''. He states that "Fraud, Luxury, and Pride must live; Whilst we the Benefits receive." The philosopher and economist Adam Smith opposes this (although he defends a moderated version of this line of thought in his theory of the invisible hand The invisible hand is a metaphor used by the British moral philosopher Adam Smith that describes the unintended greater social benefits and public good brought about by individuals acting in their own self-interests. Smith originally mention ...), since Mandeville fails, in his opinion, to distinguish between vice and virtue. References Paradoxes Social philosophy Paradoxes in economics {{social-philo-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bernard Mandeville
Bernard Mandeville, or Bernard de Mandeville (; 15 November 1670 – 21 January 1733), was an Anglo-Dutch philosopher, political economist and satirist. Born in Rotterdam, Netherlands, he lived most of his life in England and used English for most of his published works. He became famous for ''The Fable of the Bees''. Life Mandeville was born on 15 November 1670, at Rotterdam in the Netherlands, where his father was a prominent physician of Huguenot origin. On leaving the Erasmus school at Rotterdam he showed his ability by an ''Oratio scholastica de medicina'' (1685), and at Leiden University in 1689 he produced the thesis ''De brutorum operationibus'', in which he advocated the Cartesian theory of automatism among animals. In 1691 he took his medical degree, pronouncing an inaugural disputation, ''De chylosi vitiata''. He moved to England to learn the language, and succeeded so remarkably that many refused to believe he was a foreigner. His father had been banished from R ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Fable Of The Bees
''The Fable of The Bees: or, Private Vices, Publick Benefits'' (1714) is a book by the Anglo-Dutch social philosopher Bernard Mandeville. It consists of the satirical poem ''The Grumbling Hive: or, Knaves turn'd Honest'', which was first published anonymously in 1705; a prose discussion of the poem, called "Remarks"; and an essay, ''An Enquiry into the Origin of Moral Virtue''. In 1723, a second edition was published with two new essays. In ''The Grumbling Hive'', Mandeville describes a bee community that thrives until the bees decide to live by honesty and virtue. As they abandon their desire for personal gain, the economy of their hive collapses, and they go on to live simple, "virtuous" lives in a hollow tree. Mandeville's implication—that private vices create social benefits—caused a scandal when public attention turned to the work, especially after its 1723 edition. Mandeville's social theory and the thesis of the book, according to E. J. Hundert, is that "contempora ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Philosophy
Philosophy (from , ) is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. Some sources claim the term was coined by Pythagoras ( BCE), although this theory is disputed by some. Philosophical methods include questioning, critical discussion, rational argument, and systematic presentation. in . Historically, ''philosophy'' encompassed all bodies of knowledge and a practitioner was known as a ''philosopher''."The English word "philosophy" is first attested to , meaning "knowledge, body of knowledge." "natural philosophy," which began as a discipline in ancient India and Ancient Greece, encompasses astronomy, medicine, and physics. For example, Newton's 1687 ''Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy'' later became classified as a book of physics. In the 19th century, the growth of modern research universiti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Economist
An economist is a professional and practitioner in the social sciences, social science discipline of economics. The individual may also study, develop, and apply theories and concepts from economics and write about economic policy. Within this field there are many sub-fields, ranging from the broad philosophy, philosophical theory, theories to the focused study of minutiae within specific Market (economics), markets, macroeconomics, macroeconomic analysis, microeconomics, microeconomic analysis or financial statement analysis, involving analytical methods and tools such as econometrics, statistics, Computational economics, economics computational models, financial economics, mathematical finance and mathematical economics. Professions Economists work in many fields including academia, government and in the private sector, where they may also "study data and statistics in order to spot trends in economic activity, economic confidence levels, and consumer attitudes. They assess ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Adam Smith
Adam Smith (baptized 1723 – 17 July 1790) was a Scottish economist and philosopher who was a pioneer in the thinking of political economy and key figure during the Scottish Enlightenment. Seen by some as "The Father of Economics"——— or "The Father of Capitalism",———— he wrote two classic works, ''The Theory of Moral Sentiments'' (1759) and ''The Wealth of Nations, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations'' (1776). The latter, often abbreviated as ''The Wealth of Nations'', is considered his ''magnum opus'' and the first modern work that treats economics as a comprehensive system and as an academic discipline. Smith refuses to explain the distribution of wealth and power in terms of God's will, God’s will and instead appeals to natural, political, social, economic and technological factors and the interactions between them. Among other economic theories, the work introduced Smith's idea of absolute advantage. Smith studied social philos ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Invisible Hand
The invisible hand is a metaphor used by the British moral philosopher Adam Smith that describes the unintended greater social benefits and public good brought about by individuals acting in their own self-interests. Smith originally mentioned the term in his work ''Theory of Moral Sentiments'' in 1759, but it has actually become known from his main work ''The Wealth of Nations'', where the word itself is mentioned only once, in connection with import restrictions. Similar ideas had already been presented before Smith by other Enlightenment thinkers, such as Anders Chydenius in his work ''The National Gain'' (1765) and Bernard Mandeville. Liberal thinkers wanted to show that society functions without collapsing even without the old hierarchical order of the feudal era. The concept was first introduced by Adam Smith in ''The Theory of Moral Sentiments'', written in 1759. The exact phrase is used just three times in Smith's writings. Smith may have come up with the two mea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Theory Of Moral Sentiments
''The Theory of Moral Sentiments'' is a 1759 book by Adam Smith. It provided the ethics, ethical, Philosophy, philosophical, Economics, economic, and Methodology, methodological underpinnings to Smith's later works, including ''The Wealth of Nations'' (1776), ''Essays on Philosophical Subjects'' (1795), and ''Lectures on Jurisprudence, Lectures on Justice, Police, Revenue, and Arms'' (1763) (first published in 1896). Sympathy Smith departed from the "moral sense" tradition of Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, and Hume, as the principle of sympathy takes the place of that organ. "Sympathy" was the term Smith used for the feeling of these moral sentiments. It was the feeling with the passions of others. It operated through a logic of mirroring, in which a spectator imaginatively reconstructed the experience of the person he watches:Smith, Adam (1872). Black, Joseph; Hutton, James (eds.). The Essays of Adam Smith' (6 ed.). London: Alex. Murry & Co. p. 9. Retrieved 21 Jan 2021. As we have ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paradoxes
A paradox is a logically self-contradictory statement or a statement that runs contrary to one's expectation. It is a statement that, despite apparently valid reasoning from true premises, leads to a seemingly self-contradictory or a logically unacceptable conclusion. A paradox usually involves contradictory-yet-interrelated elements that exist simultaneously and persist over time. They result in "persistent contradiction between interdependent elements" leading to a lasting "unity of opposites". In logic, many paradoxes exist that are known to be invalid arguments, yet are nevertheless valuable in promoting critical thinking, while other paradoxes have revealed errors in definitions that were assumed to be rigorous, and have caused axioms of mathematics and logic to be re-examined. One example is Russell's paradox, which questions whether a "list of all lists that do not contain themselves" would include itself, and showed that attempts to found set theory on the identification ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Social Philosophy
Social philosophy examines questions about the foundations of social institutions, social behavior, and interpretations of society in terms of ethical values rather than empirical relations. Social philosophers emphasize understanding the social contexts for political, legal, moral and cultural questions, and the development of novel theoretical frameworks, from social ontology to care ethics to cosmopolitan theories of democracy, natural law, human rights, gender equity and global justice. Subdisciplines There is often a considerable overlap between the questions addressed by social philosophy and ethics or value theory. Other forms of social philosophy include political philosophy and jurisprudence, which are largely concerned with the societies of state and government and their functioning. Social philosophy, ethics, and political philosophy all share intimate connections with other disciplines in the social sciences. In turn, the social sciences themselves are of focal in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
