Pierre Bayle and Bernard de Mandeville

This chapter shows the great work of Pierre Bayle to exclude religion and magic from the explanation of social phenomena. This paved the way for the work of Bernard de Mandeville, who shed a powerful light on the fact that actions are not to be judged by intentions, but by the outcomes they produce. Mandeville was the pioneer of all those scholars who supported the idea that social order, namely the compatibility of human actions, can be achieved unintentionally. Despite the scandal caused by his often provocative prose, Mandeville’s Fable of the Bees was a decisive step in the explanation of social phenomena, what fueled the “discovery of society”. But Mandeville’s work met a harsh fate. Many have not understood it; some perceived its meaning and immediately opposed it; and very few have understood and supported it. Only in the XX century, with the contributions of Edwin Cannan, Frederick B. Kaye and Friedrich A. Hayek, was it possible to place Mandeville in his correct position in the history of ideas.