Abstract
Bernard Mandeville, in his double condition as physician and as moral and political philosopher of the early eighteenth century in Great Britain was clearly linked by many of his contemporaries to the sceptics, and not only to his contemporary sceptics but also to Ancient Pyrrhonians. However, many of his most relevant theories do not explicitly show this link. We then must ask what kind of scepticism was his if any? In order to characterize it, this paper suggests there is a need for a reassessment of some of the most celebrated Mandevillean theories and themes (self-liking and self-love, criticism of self-denial, rigorism, the relation of individuals with society, the role of luxury, economic conceptions, and so on) focusing his intertwined inheritance of a medical outlook stressing empiricism and of a sceptical tradition of thought applied to moral and political issues. Thus our paper sustains that Mandeville’s own peculiar combination of individualism, empiricism, conservatism and “rigorism” mixes up with a sort of mitigated scepticism.
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Notes
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The most complete treatment of this subject is nowadays Phillip Hilton’s (cf. Hilton 2010).
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The complete title of the first edition of this treatise in three dialogues is: A Treatise of the Hypochondriack and Hysterick Passions, Vulgarly call’d the Hypo in Men and the Vapours in Women; In which the Symptoms, Causes and Cure of those Diseases are set forth after a Method intirely new. The whole interpreted, with Instructive Discourses on the Real Art of Physick itself, And Entertaining Remarks on the Modern Practice of Physicians and Apothecaries: Very useful to all, that the Misfortune to stand in need of either, reprinted in the 1715 issue (cf. Mandeville 1715: i). The 1715 reprint of this edition is called in the frontispiece second edition. However, the true new edition, significant is the 1730 one, of which the revised and enlarged the complete title becomes abridged: A Treatise of the Hypochondriack and Hysterick Diseases. In Three Dialogues, London, J. Tonson, 1730.
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Romão, R.B. (2015). Mandeville as a Sceptical and Medical Philosopher. In: Balsemão Pires, E., Braga, J. (eds) Bernard de Mandeville's Tropology of Paradoxes. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, vol 40. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-19381-6_8
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