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‘The wickedest man in Europe’ was just an intellectual provocateur

Sir Bernard Mandeville certainly revelled in mischief-making; but his one simple idea – that human beings are animals – seems unremarkable today

4 January 2025

9:00 AM

4 January 2025

9:00 AM

Man-Devil: The Mind and Times of Bernard Mandeville, the Wickedest Man in Europe John Callanan

Princeton University Press, pp.328, 30

In Paris in 1740 the hangman publicly burned his most famous book. In England some of the best and brightest – Alexander Pope, Henry Fielding, Bishop George Berkeley, Jonathan Swift and John Wesley – queued up to destroy his reputation. The book was The Fable of the Bees (1714) and the author was Sir Bernard Mandeville, popularly known as the Man-Devil.

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