Book launch event: Mandeville’s Fable by Robin Douglass - 6 June 2023

Professor Robin Douglass will give a short talk about the book, followed by questions from the audience and a drinks reception.

Bernard Mandeville’s The Fable of the Bees outraged its 18th-century audience by proclaiming that private vices lead to public prosperity. Today the work is best known as an early iteration of laissez-faire capitalism. In Mandeville’s Fable, Robin Douglass looks beyond the notoriety of Mandeville’s great work to reclaim its status as one of the most incisive philosophical studies of human nature and the origin of society in the Enlightenment era. Focusing on Mandeville’s moral, social, and political ideas, Douglass offers a revelatory account of why we should take Mandeville seriously as a philosopher.

The event is taking place in the Anatomy Museum, Strand building, King's College London (WC2R 2LS)

More details about the book can be found here.