Affiliation:
1. Department of Political Economy, King’s College London, London, UK
Abstract
In The Fable of the Bees, Bernard Mandeville declared that ‘it is impossible we could be sociable Creatures without Hypocrisy’. Mandeville set out his ideas of sociability against Anthony Ashley Cooper, Third Earl of Shaftesbury, whose notions of virtue he dismissed as ‘a vast Inlet to Hypocrisy’. The main goal of this article is to reconstruct Mandeville’s account of hypocrisy, first by explaining why he accords it such a prominent role in understanding our moral and social norms, and, second, by piecing together his criticisms of Shaftesbury’s rival ethical theory. In doing so, the article outlines a more general Mandevillean framework for assessing when hypocrisy is likely to prove either socially beneficial or pernicious, while also examining what is at stake in choosing to expose rather than tolerate other people’s hypocrisy.
Subject
Sociology and Political Science
Cited by
6 articles.
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