The Thread of Language and the Web of Dominion

Mandeville to Rousseau and Back

Bibliographic Data

ID11846995
AuthorsE J Hundert (corresponding author)
Year1987
Volume21
Issue2
Pages169-169
Publication date1987-01-01
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueEighteenth-Century Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0013-2586 • E-ISSN: 1086-315X
PublisherJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/2739103
OpenAlexW2316624391
LanguageEN
Citations received11

BERNARD MANDEVILLE (1670-1733) was a native of Rotterdam who studied at the University of Leyden, practiced medicine in England where he wrote satiric verse, and, during the last decade of his life, acquired the reputation of being a licentious philosopher-a detested name, an opponent lamented, yet ne'er to die.' The Fable of the Bees (1723 and 1729)2 was one of the most widely read and disputed books of its time, and its style, substance, and mode of argument has periodically attracted the attention of students in virtually every branch of the humanities and social sciences. Among the many intellectual lives fashioned for Mandeville by this division of academic labour, that of a theorist of language has seldom been noticed. This omission is understandable, since Mandeville considers the origin and use of language only in digressions meant to support his wider psychological and moral arguments (I: 190-192 and II: 285-291). My purpose in drawing attention to Mandeville's discussion of language is not intended to claim for it a previously unrecognized insight into linguistic processes, but to examine how The Fable

Dominion · Political science · Programming language · Thread (computing · World Wide Web · Computer Science · Historical and Literary Studies · Law · Philosophy · Political Theory and Influence · Rousseau and Enlightenment Thought

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