Human nature and therapeutic forms in B. Mandeville

Abstract

Medical science has been recognized as an important component of the project for the anatomy of the “invisible Part of Man” presented in The Fable of the Bees, allowing Bernard Mandeville to describe the naturalistic foundations of morality and politics. Paradoxically, the acknowledgment of “self-denial” originating in the social mechanisms that conceal and repress egoistic impulses and interests has contributed to a stereotypical reading of Mandeville’s Treatise of the Hypochondriack and Hysterick Diseases, according to which a materialistic management of the passions is the primary, if not the only, way to access and treat dysfunctions. Starting with a study of Mandeville's conception of the principles of human nature, exposed in The Fable of the Bees, this article will revise that presumption by focusing on the therapeutic forms of observation emerging in the three dialogues of the Treatise.