SOURCE: Monro, Hector. “The Two Mandevilles” and “The Real Mandeville?” In The Ambivalence of Bernard Mandeville, pp. 1-24; 249-67. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975.

In the following essays, Monro discusses two very contradictory but equally plausible interpretations of Mandeville and finds such ambiguity consistent with the philosophical view evident throughout his work that the world is ultimately indefinable and unknowable.

The Two Mandevilles

Mandeville is not an obscure writer, but it has nevertheless been found possible to interpret him in two diametrically opposed ways. On one view, he is a pious Christian, an ascetic, and an unusually austere moralist, who finds corruption even in apparently laudable or at least innocent activities. On the other, he is at best an easy-going man of the world, at worst a profligate, a cynic, a scoffer at all virtue and religion, and even (in the words of William Law, the author of A Serious...