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Man-Devil: The Mind and Times of Bernard Mandeville, the Wickedest Man in Europe
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 humourous 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 humourous 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.
In 1714, doctor, philosopher and writer Bernard Mandeville published The Fable of the Bees, a humourous 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 humourous 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.
328 pages, Hardcover
First published January 14, 2025
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
May 3, 2026
Bernard Mandeville was a Dutch doctor who washed up in London around 1698 with considerable intellectual baggage, a father banished from Rotterdam for political agitation, a student history of lampoon-posting in public squares, and a very low opinion of the species he had come to treat.
Callanan's book follows this cheerfully misanthropic physician from his Leiden dissertation on animal minds, through his medical practice diagnosing the genteel disorders of England's hypochondriac leisure class, to the publication of the poem that would earn him the street name "Man-Devil."
In Rotterdam, young Bernard had cut his teeth on Pierre Bayle's sceptical philosophy, dodged the fallout of the Costerman Riots (which his own family may have orchestrated for private gain while publicly posing as champions of justice), and concluded early that the gap between what people say they are doing and what they are actually doing is the most reliable fact about our species.
The Fable of the Bees, first circulated as a piece of doggerel verse in 1705 and expanded to full scandal potential by 1723, proposed one of the most unwelcome ideas in the history of polite society: that every flourishing economy runs on vice. Mandeville's beehive allegory shows a prosperous hive of greedy, licentious bees who, upon receiving their foolish wish for total moral reform from an exasperated Jove, promptly collapse into poverty.
With no vanity, the fashion trade dies. With no gluttony, doctors and quacks lose their clientele. With no crime, lawyers and prison builders are unemployed. With no pride or envy, the luxury goods market evaporates entirely and the foreign trade dries up. Virtue, Mandeville announced to an apoplectic England, is the bane of industry.
The Middlesex Grand Jury put the book on trial in 1723, clergy sermonized against it across London, Alexander Pope immortalized Mandeville in The Dunciad, and the Paris hangman burned a French translation in 1740. Mandeville'ss response to all of this was, by every available account, one of quiet delight.
Callanan traces how Mandeville's central argument grew from his medical practice and his philosophy together, from Montaigne's claim that pride is humanity's founding disease, from Bayle's mischievous suggestion that the Cartesian theory explaining away animal rationality might explain away human rationality too, and from Sydenham's clinical observation that the idle and comfortable classes reliably develop spectacular nervous disorders.
The Treatise of the Hypochondriack and Hysterick Diseases, Mandeville's favorite among his own works, stages these ideas as a dialogue between a despairing, Latin-quoting patient named Misomedon and a physician named Philopirio (Mandeville's own literary disguise), in which the doctor's principal diagnosis is that most of what passes for medical treatment is theatrical confidence performed by pride-driven physicians upon flattery-hungry patients. Private vices, public benefits: the formula applied as well to the consulting room as to the counting house.
Whether Mandeville, admired in secret by Hume, Voltaire, Adam Smith, and later Darwin, Marx, Hayek, and Keynes, was a cynical satirist or a man of "severe and exalted morality," as he solemnly claimed, is a question Callanan handles with care. A little too much care.
John Callanan is a philosopher at King's College London who specializes in Kant and early modern thought, which makes him the ideal guide to a thinker whom Kant himself listed as a key figure in the history of ethics. I think that Callanan finds his subject genuinely funny, and his affection for Mandeville's mischief gives the book a warmth that scholarly biography often loses in its own apparatus.
Mandeville saw commerce, religion, and virtue as three different branding strategies for the same underlying product, namely self-interest. The Fable of the Bees is essentially a recipe for civilization. Every algorithm that sells us a "cure" for the anxiety created by the previous algorithm is a gloss on Mandeville. Every wellness brand monetizing the stress produced by the economy it profits from is a bee in his hive. Gordon Gekko was a latecomer. The private vices, public benefits formula describes late capitalism with an accuracy that should make economists uncomfortable and does make them famous instead.
A wonderful book about a figure I knew nothing about and, after reading this tome, will never forget.
❤️ 🇮🇱
Callanan's book follows this cheerfully misanthropic physician from his Leiden dissertation on animal minds, through his medical practice diagnosing the genteel disorders of England's hypochondriac leisure class, to the publication of the poem that would earn him the street name "Man-Devil."
In Rotterdam, young Bernard had cut his teeth on Pierre Bayle's sceptical philosophy, dodged the fallout of the Costerman Riots (which his own family may have orchestrated for private gain while publicly posing as champions of justice), and concluded early that the gap between what people say they are doing and what they are actually doing is the most reliable fact about our species.
The Fable of the Bees, first circulated as a piece of doggerel verse in 1705 and expanded to full scandal potential by 1723, proposed one of the most unwelcome ideas in the history of polite society: that every flourishing economy runs on vice. Mandeville's beehive allegory shows a prosperous hive of greedy, licentious bees who, upon receiving their foolish wish for total moral reform from an exasperated Jove, promptly collapse into poverty.
With no vanity, the fashion trade dies. With no gluttony, doctors and quacks lose their clientele. With no crime, lawyers and prison builders are unemployed. With no pride or envy, the luxury goods market evaporates entirely and the foreign trade dries up. Virtue, Mandeville announced to an apoplectic England, is the bane of industry.
The Middlesex Grand Jury put the book on trial in 1723, clergy sermonized against it across London, Alexander Pope immortalized Mandeville in The Dunciad, and the Paris hangman burned a French translation in 1740. Mandeville'ss response to all of this was, by every available account, one of quiet delight.
Callanan traces how Mandeville's central argument grew from his medical practice and his philosophy together, from Montaigne's claim that pride is humanity's founding disease, from Bayle's mischievous suggestion that the Cartesian theory explaining away animal rationality might explain away human rationality too, and from Sydenham's clinical observation that the idle and comfortable classes reliably develop spectacular nervous disorders.
The Treatise of the Hypochondriack and Hysterick Diseases, Mandeville's favorite among his own works, stages these ideas as a dialogue between a despairing, Latin-quoting patient named Misomedon and a physician named Philopirio (Mandeville's own literary disguise), in which the doctor's principal diagnosis is that most of what passes for medical treatment is theatrical confidence performed by pride-driven physicians upon flattery-hungry patients. Private vices, public benefits: the formula applied as well to the consulting room as to the counting house.
Whether Mandeville, admired in secret by Hume, Voltaire, Adam Smith, and later Darwin, Marx, Hayek, and Keynes, was a cynical satirist or a man of "severe and exalted morality," as he solemnly claimed, is a question Callanan handles with care. A little too much care.
John Callanan is a philosopher at King's College London who specializes in Kant and early modern thought, which makes him the ideal guide to a thinker whom Kant himself listed as a key figure in the history of ethics. I think that Callanan finds his subject genuinely funny, and his affection for Mandeville's mischief gives the book a warmth that scholarly biography often loses in its own apparatus.
Mandeville saw commerce, religion, and virtue as three different branding strategies for the same underlying product, namely self-interest. The Fable of the Bees is essentially a recipe for civilization. Every algorithm that sells us a "cure" for the anxiety created by the previous algorithm is a gloss on Mandeville. Every wellness brand monetizing the stress produced by the economy it profits from is a bee in his hive. Gordon Gekko was a latecomer. The private vices, public benefits formula describes late capitalism with an accuracy that should make economists uncomfortable and does make them famous instead.
A wonderful book about a figure I knew nothing about and, after reading this tome, will never forget.
❤️ 🇮🇱
April 10, 2025
Long awaited this book. Happy to see Wootton helped with revision. Charming, accessible and necessary - Mandeville's thought has long been out of philosophic vogue but its practice seems more active than ever. Thoroughly enjoyed, 5 beans.
November 3, 2025
If you are interested in Mandeville's thought, then I would highly recommend this book. Mandeville's writings are often scattered on various topics, and he himself never set out to write a treatise on his views. His writings were alos largely satire and as such, it is often unclear as to what his actual views or arguments are in the Fable of the Bees or A Modest Defence of Public Stews. John Callanan does a wonderful job tying all his writings together to construct what is probably one of the most influential naturalist outlooks on human nature and morality in Mandeville's writings.
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January 22, 2025Imagine a beehive. The inhabitants are nasty little things: venal, selfish, and corrupt; greedily buzzing around guzzling honey and flaunting their stripes. Even so, the hive prospers. Then, one day, by a sudden act of God, the bees clean up their act. They become virtuous. And before they know it, the hive is in free-fall. Without vanity, there is no need for fashionable clothing. Without pride or luxury, the construction industry falls apart. Without gluttony or boozing, chefs and vintners are out on their feet. Without crime, the police twiddle their thumbs. And without fraud and deception, the lawyer-bees (we’re really stretching the metaphor here) are put out of business: who needs contract law when everyone is so damned honest? Now set that story to wince-inducing doggerel, add some explanatory notes and an introductory essay, and you have yourself The Fable of the Bees, Bernard Mandeville’s shock-success of 1714.
Born in 1670 to a family of wealthy Dutch physicians, Mandeville received his medical training in the Netherlands before establishing his own practice in London in his 20s. It was an unlikely background for a social and political theorist, but an advantageous one. As John Callanan shows in his entertaining and enlightening new book, Mandeville’s background as a physician instilled in him the sense that one could not comprehend the fundamental mechanics of society without first grappling with what made humans human. To understand the hive, you needed to understand the bee. For this reason, Mandeville devoted just as much time and effort to investigating matters such as hypochondria and sex as he did to sociological analysis. All these things were connected. Society was shaped by human behaviour and human behaviour was governed by base animal instinct. While this insight had, to an extent, been anticipated by theorists such as Thomas Hobbes, Mandeville’s capacity to link human psychology with broader socio-economic patterns was genuinely and radically new, anticipating the modern field of behavioural economics by nearly three centuries and the ideas of Adam Smith by a generation.
Read the full review at https://www.historytoday.com/archive/...
Joseph Hone is author of The Paper Chase: The Printer, the Spymaster, and the Hunt for the Rebel Pamphleteers (Chatto & Windus, 2024).
Born in 1670 to a family of wealthy Dutch physicians, Mandeville received his medical training in the Netherlands before establishing his own practice in London in his 20s. It was an unlikely background for a social and political theorist, but an advantageous one. As John Callanan shows in his entertaining and enlightening new book, Mandeville’s background as a physician instilled in him the sense that one could not comprehend the fundamental mechanics of society without first grappling with what made humans human. To understand the hive, you needed to understand the bee. For this reason, Mandeville devoted just as much time and effort to investigating matters such as hypochondria and sex as he did to sociological analysis. All these things were connected. Society was shaped by human behaviour and human behaviour was governed by base animal instinct. While this insight had, to an extent, been anticipated by theorists such as Thomas Hobbes, Mandeville’s capacity to link human psychology with broader socio-economic patterns was genuinely and radically new, anticipating the modern field of behavioural economics by nearly three centuries and the ideas of Adam Smith by a generation.
Read the full review at https://www.historytoday.com/archive/...
Joseph Hone is author of The Paper Chase: The Printer, the Spymaster, and the Hunt for the Rebel Pamphleteers (Chatto & Windus, 2024).
April 14, 2025
A challenge to Immanuel Kant's moral philosophy before it was ever formulated.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews