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A Letter to Dion By: Bernard Mandeville (1670-1733?) |
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The Augustan Reprint Society
BERNARD MANDEVILLE
A Letter to Dion (1732)
With an Introduction by Jacob Viner Publication Number 41 Los Angeles
William Andrews Clark Memorial Library
University of California
1953
GENERAL EDITORS H. RICHARD ARCHER, Clark Memorial Library
RICHARD C. BOYS, University of Michigan
RALPH COHEN, University of California, Los Angeles
VINTON A. DEARING, University of California, Los Angeles ASSISTANT EDITOR W. EARL BRITTON, University of Michigan ADVISORY EDITORS EMMETT L. AVERY, State College of Washington
BENJAMIN BOYCE, Duke University
LOUIS BREDVOLD, University of Michigan
JOHN BUTT, King's College, University of Durham
JAMES L. CLIFFORD, Columbia University
ARTHUR FRIEDMAN, University of Chicago
EDWARD NILES HOOKER, University of California, Los Angeles
LOUIS A. LANDA, Princeton University
SAMUEL H. MONK, University of Minnesota
EARNEST MOSSNER, University of Texas
JAMES SUTHERLAND, University College, London
H. T. SWEDENBERG, JR., University of California, Los Angeles CORRESPONDING SECRETARY EDNA C. DAVIS, Clark Memorial Library
INTRODUCTION
The Letter to Dion , Mandeville's last publication, was, in form, a
reply to Bishop Berkeley's Alciphron: or, the Minute Philosopher . In
Alciphron , a series of dialogues directed against "free thinkers" in
general, Dion is the presiding host and Alciphron and Lysicles are the
expositors of objectionable doctrines. Mandeville's Fable of the Bees
is attacked in the Second Dialogue, where Lysicles expounds some
Mandevillian views but is theologically an atheist, politically a
revolutionary, and socially a leveller. In the Letter to Dion ,
however, Mandeville assumes that Berkeley is charging him with all of
these views, and accuses Berkeley of unfairness and misrepresentation. Neither Alciphron nor the Letter to Dion caused much of a stir. The
Letter never had a second edition,[1] and is now exceedingly scarce.
The significance of the Letter would be minor if it were confined to
its role in the exchange between Berkeley and Mandeville.[2] Berkeley
had more sinners in mind than Mandeville, and Mandeville more critics
than Berkeley. Berkeley, however, mere than any other critic seems to
have gotten under Mandeville's skin, perhaps because Berkeley alone
made effective use against him of his own weapons of satire and
ridicule.[3] [1] In its only foreign language translation, the Letter ,
somewhat abbreviated, is appended to the German translation of
The Fable of the Bees by Otto Bobertag, Mandevilles
Bienenfabel , Munich, 1914, pp. 349 398. [2] Berkeley again criticized Mandeville in A Discourse
Addressed to Magistrates , [1736], Works , A. C. Fraser ed.,
Oxford, 1871, III. 424. [3] A Vindication of the Reverend D B y , London, 1734,
applies to Alciphron the comment of Shaftesbury that reverend
authors who resort to dialogue form may "perhaps, find means to
laugh gentlemen into their religion, who have unfortunately been
laughed out of it." See Alfred Owen Aldridge, "Shaftesbury and
the Deist Manifesto," Transactions of the American Philosophical
Society , New Series, XLI (1951), Part 2, p. 358. Berkeley came to closest grips with The Fable of the Bees when he
rejected Mandeville's grim picture of human nature, and when he met
Mandeville's eulogy of luxury by the argument that expenditures on
luxuries were no better support of employment than equivalent spending
on charity to the poor or than the more lasting life which would result
from avoidance of luxury.[4] [4] Francis Hutcheson, a fellow townsman of Berkeley, had
previously made these points against Mandeville's treatment of
luxury in letters to the Dublin Journal in 1726, (reprinted in
Hutcheson, Reflections upon Laughter, and Remarks upon the Fable
of the Bees , Glasgow, 1750, pp... Continue reading book >>
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