The dark side of recognition

Bernard Mandeville and the morality of pride

Datos Bibliográficos

ID21597759
AutoresRobin Douglas (0000-0002-0939-6211, King's College London, autor de correspondencia)
Año2024
Volumen32
Número2
Páginas284-300
Fecha de publicación2024-03-03
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaBritish Journal for the History of Philosophy (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0960-8788 • E-ISSN: 1469-3526
EditorialInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/09608788.2021.1984202
OpenAlexW3205558721
IdiomaEN
Referencias citadas19

This article reconstructs Bernard Mandeville’s pride-centred theory of recognition and advances two main arguments. First, I maintain that Mandeville really did regard pride as a vice and took the prevalence of this passion as evidence of our morally compromised nature. Mandeville’s account of pride may have been indebted to French neo-Augustinian moralists, yet I show that the moral connotations he associated with the passion are based on a naturalistic analysis of our moral psychology and do not depend upon endorsing any theological assumptions about our fallen condition. Second, I offer a qualified defence of Mandeville’s pride-centred theory against other eighteenth-century philosophers – Archibald Campbell, David Hume and Adam Smith – who presented the desire for social esteem in a more positive light. Even if there is nothing troubling about a moderate and well-regulated desire for esteem, I suggest that Mandeville’s analysis remains deeply unsettling in so far as it reveals the extent of pride behind our desire for recognition

Epistemology · Great Rift · Morality · Physics · Pride · Theology · Emile Durkheim and Sociology · Historical and Scientific Studies · Law in Society and Culture · Philosophy