It used to be that everyone read the "notorious" Bernard Mandeville (1670-1733). He was a great satirist and come to have a profound impact on economics, ethics and social philosophy. "The Fable of the Bees" begins with a poem and continues with a number of essays and dialogues. It is all tied together by the startling and original idea that "private vices" (self-interest) lead to "publick benefits" (the development and operation of society).

This edition includes, in addition to the most pertinent sections of The Fable's two volumes, a selection from Mandeville's An Enquiry into the Origin of Honor and selections from two of Mandeville's most important sources: Pierre Bayle and the Jansenist Pierre Nicole. Hundert's Introduction places Mandeville in a number of eighteenth-century debates--particularly that of the nature and morality of commercial modernity--and underscores the degree to which his work stood as a central problem, not only for his immediate English contemporaries, (...) but for such philosophers as Hume, Rousseau, and Kant. The selections are substantive enough to faithfully represent Mandeville the social theorist, and compact enough to be used in courses that can afford to spend no more than a week on his work. (shrink)

What role do fables play in Cartesian method and psychology? By looking at Descartes’ use of fables, James Griffith suggests there is a fabular logic that runs to the heart of Descartes’ philosophy. First focusing on The World and the Discourse on Method, this volume shows that by writing in fable form, Descartes allowed his readers to break from Scholastic methods of philosophizing. With this fable-structure or -logic in mind, the book reexamines the relationship between analysis, synthesis, and (...) inexact sciences; between metaphysics and ethico-political life; and between the imagination, the will, and the passions. (shrink)

Once upon a time, the planet was tyrannized by a giant dragon. The dragon stood taller than the largest cathedral, and it was covered with thick black scales. Its red eyes glowed with hate, and from its terrible jaws flowed an incessant stream of evil-smelling yellowishgreen slime. It demanded from humankind a blood-curdling tribute: to satisfy its enormous appetite, ten thousand men and women had to be delivered every evening at the onset of dark to the foot of the mountain (...) where the dragontyrant lived. Sometimes the dragon would devour these unfortunate souls upon arrival; sometimes again it would lock them up in the mountain where they would wither away for months or years before eventually being consumed. (shrink)

In this powerful genealogical investigation of the notion of sovereignty from Bodin and Hobbes, through Rousseau and the Federalists to Foucault and the framers of the European constitution, Mairet plots its articulation with and through the bloody history of Europe and colonialism, and shows how the reconstitution of the European political community after the Second World War marked the beginning of a new trajectory--a new narrative--that offers the hope of a post-sovereign, and postbellic, mode of political being-in-the-world. --Book Jacket.

This latest offering from one of the founding figures of postmodernism is a collection of fifteen "fables" that ask, in the words of Jean-Francois Lyotard, "how to live, and why?

Fables and the Art of Leadership brings those same values and philosophy to the workplace, where they're now needed more than ever. This unique and timely work is for everyone who aspires to become and be a better leader.

In A Climate of History Dipesh Chakrabarty locates Kant’s speculative reading of Genesis as “the Enduring Fable” furnishing the background for human domination and earthly destruction. Writing from the fable’s “ruins,” Chakrabarty urges the elaboration of new fables that provide the background ethics and meanings required to recast relations between humans and the natural world. Responding to Chakrabarty’s challenge, we outline two “fables” based first in the oft ignored Genesis 2, and second, in Matauranga Māori. Although marginalised, these (...) extant fables provide the imaginary for radically other ways of being human in a more-than-human world in turmoil. (shrink)

On the basis of neuroiinaging studies, Posner & Raichle summarily report that the prefrontal cortex is involved in executive functioning and attention. In contrast to that superficial view, we briefly describe a testable model of the kinds of representations that are stored in prefrontal cortex, which, when activated, are expressed via plans, actions, thematic knowledge, and schemas.

This is the first comprehensive study in English of Voltaire's contes philosophiques--the philosophical tales for which he is best remembered and which include his masterpiece Candide. Pearson situates each story in its historical and intellectual context and offers new readings in light of modern critical thinking. He rejects the traditional view that Voltaire's contes were the private expression of his philosophical perplexity, and argues that it is narrative that is Voltaire's essential mode of thought. His book is a witty, lucid, (...) and scholarly guide to the "fables of reason" through which Voltaire's skepticism undermined the contemporary religious and philosophical explanations of human experience. (shrink)

A collection of 15 fables from a founding figure of postmodernism that ask in the words of Jean-Francois Lyotard, "how to live and why?" It provides attention to issues of justice and ethics, and aesthetics and judgement - unravelling and reconfiguring idealistic notions of subjects.

A collection of 15 fables from a founding figure of postmodernism that ask in the words of Jean-Francois Lyotard, "how to live and why?" It provides attention to issues of justice and ethics, and aesthetics and judgement - unravelling and reconfiguring idealistic notions of subjects.

This book offers an analysis of the ways a linked set of ethico-political concepts - responsibility, rights, freedom, equality, and justice - might be re-thought, in view of the linguistic deconstruction of their underlying principle, the individual human subject. In a series of readings of contemporary thinkers and their philosophical antecedents the author argues that an encounter with the difficulties of reading language, precisely what resists the immediate comprehension or mastery of a subject, enables in turn a new thought of (...) rights and responsibility. The book is driven by a sense that literary and theoretical questions, and the ideas or concepts they appeal to or provoke, play a critical role in the way we think about and experience politics. The author seeks to harness this specialized discourse in order to consider what ethical and political thinking might learn from literature and its theorists. (shrink)

Prompted by Derrida's work on the animal-fable in eighteenth-century debates about political power, this article examines the role played by the fiction of the animal in thinking of pity as either a natural virtue (in Rousseau's Second Discourse) or as a natural passion (in Mandeville's The Fable of the Bees). The war of fables between Rousseau and Mandeville – and their hostile reception by Samuel Johnson and Adam Smith – reinforce that the animal-fable illustrates not so much (...) the proper of man as the possibilities and limitations of a moral philosophy that is unable to address the political realities of the state. (shrink)

This essay offers a brief reading of, and reflection on, certain fables by the Chinese Taoist writer Chuang-Tzu. It also reflects on the art of Chinese scrolls and the Tao and Tinji.

Aesop's fables are used to gather HR fables and these fables are told mainly in the words of the protagonists of these moral stories, HR practitioners. Leaving the moral meaning of the fables for the reader to interpret so the reader can ethically connect with the morality of HR work, the personal narratives of practitioners and their humanity, the fables conclude with a critical commentary by the author, the promotion of a human virtue and HR moral maxim. The article, itself, (...) then ends with an explanation of the research methodology adopted to compile the HR fables. (shrink)

Evidence shows that changes in the architecture, design, and decor of health care facilities can improve patient care and in the long run reduce expenses. These essays detail the state of the research, look inside two hospitals that put some of these innovations into practice, and consider how design fits into the moral mission ofhealth care.

In the field of theory formation some of the old metaphysical questions attract the attention of philosophers anew. The idea that observational terms refer to objects only in a theoretical mode leads to a comparison of fables and theories. Meinong's concept of incomplete objects is used for linking these two ways of constructing objects. Lessing's theory of fables is then compared with the new anti-positivist theory of science by pointing out some striking similarities.

In the field of theory formation some of the old metaphysical questions attract the attention of philosophers anew. The idea that observational terms refer to objects only in a theoretical mode leads to a comparison of fables and theories. Meinong's concept of incomplete objects is used for linking these two ways of constructing objects. Lessing's theory of fables is then compared with the new anti-positivist theory of science by pointing out some striking similarities.

This article considers a strange, understudied work of eighteenth-century musical theatre, Thomas D’Urfey’s Wonders in the Sun (1706). This highly intertextual, generically heterogeneous comic opera is a pastiche of literary and performative modes and ultimately a machine for generating wonder; it draws on elements from Aristophanes’ The Birds, seventeenth-century masque and semi-opera, as well as the lunar fictions. The article situates this play not only within a history of literary wonder and stage spectacle, but within the English tradition of politicized (...) animal fable. Discussing D’Urfey’s comic opera against selections from John Gay’s Fables, it argues that the utopian/dystopian animal in these imaginative satires reveals the period’s twinned fascinations with discovery and alterity, as well as emergent discomfiture with anthro- and Eurocentric Enlightenment beliefs. (shrink)

This article considers a strange, understudied work of eighteenth-century musical theatre, Thomas D’Urfey’s Wonders in the Sun (1706). This highly intertextual, generically heterogeneous comic opera is a pastiche of literary and performative modes and ultimately a machine for generating wonder; it draws on elements from Aristophanes’ The Birds, seventeenth-century masque and semi-opera, as well as the lunar fictions. The article situates this play not only within a history of literary wonder and stage spectacle, but within the English tradition of politicized (...) animal fable. Discussing D’Urfey’s comic opera against selections from John Gay’s Fables, it argues that the utopian/dystopian animal in these imaginative satires reveals the period’s twinned fascinations with discovery and alterity, as well as emergent discomfiture with anthro- and Eurocentric Enlightenment beliefs. (shrink)

Étude de la réception de Fontenelle dans l'Encyclopédie qui démontre que celui-ci joue un rôle important à titre de figure tutélaire pour les encyclopédistes, à titre de penseur des progrès de l'esprit humain. -/- Study of Fontenelle's reception in the Encyclopédie, showing that he plays an important role as an authority for the encyclopedists, as a thinker of the progress of human mind.

The genre of fable tends to be overlooked in the study of Korean literary history on the ground that the genre seems too archaic to reflect the aesthetic standards established in the modern European novel, in which the focus lies in the realistic representation of the individual or contemporary society. However, the genre was not completely abandoned by modern Korean writers. Few critics have noted the continuing role played by the rich Korean fable tradition, which eventually made the (...) reinvention of the genre in the mass media possible. In particular, it is worth noting that there was the emergence of a new subgenre of fable in the late nineteenth century: that is, fabulous court case fiction, which is quite distinct from the Chinese literary tradition that had underprivileged imaginative narrative texts under the absolute domination of Confucian historiography. The genre of fabulous court case fiction makes us reconsider the plurality of narrative forms and various narrative functions. In this study, I examine how imaginative narrative texts such as fables simultaneously pursue the pleasure of storytelling and the purposes of both moral and specialized education. (shrink)

Bernard Mandeville's The Fable of the Bees outraged its eighteenth-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 this book, 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. Douglass expertly reconstructs Mandeville's theory of how self-centred individuals, who care for their reputation and social standing above all else, could live peacefully together in large societies. Pride and shame are the principal motives of human behaviour, on this account, with a large dose of hypocrisy and self-deception lying behind our moral practices. In his analysis, Douglass attends closely to the changes between different editions of the Fable; considers Mandeville's arguments in light of objections and rival accounts from other eighteenth-century philosophers, including Shaftesbury, Hume, and Smith; and draws on more recent findings from social psychology. With this detailed and original reassessment of Mandeville's philosophy, Douglass shows how The Fable of the Bees-by shining a light on the dark side of human nature-has the power to unsettle readers even today. (shrink)

ArgumentIn his Philosophia practica universalis, Christian Wolff proposes a “mathematical” theory of moral action that includes his statements on the Aesopian fable. As a sort of moral example, Wolff claims, the fable is an appropriate means to influence human conduct because it conveys general truths to intuition. This didactic concept is modeled on the geometrical figure: Just as students intuit mathematical demonstrations by looking at figures on a blackboard, one can learn how to execute complex actions by listening (...) to a fable. Wolff's “scientific” fable theory met with an ambivalent reception. Lessing, who in his fable treatises re-translates Wolff's suggestions into the conceptual framework of poetics, interprets the geometric model as a stylistic ideal. The famous passage on Homer's successive descriptions in Lessing's Laokoon can be seen as another attempt to apply the representational model of geometry to literature. Herder, reading Wolff in a way that might be called deconstructive, replaces Wolff's geometric theory of poetry by a poetic anthropology of geometry. (shrink)

Certains ont proclamé la " fin de l'Histoire ". Ne serait-ce pas plutôt celle de la philosophie politique moderne qu'il conviendrait de guetter? Depuis cinq siècles, en effet, l'action politique a eu pour objet l'institution et la consolidation de la souveraineté, tandis que la philosophie politique structurait ses principes de gouvernement à partir de ce concept : penser la politique c'était penser la souveraineté. Or la souveraineté, née en Europe, forgée à travers les guerres qui donnèrent aux peuples le sentiment (...) de leur particularité, s'y achève sous nos yeux, en une Union des peuples fondée désormais sur la paix, à la suite d'un génocide suicidaire. Pour penser l'achèvement, la philosophie politique ne saurait plus se contenter de répéter ses affirmations communes sur la volonté du peuple, l'indivisibilité de la république, la dictature du prolétariat et les droits de l'homme. Aucune n'a pu fonder l'existence libre de la multitude : elles ont soit révélé dans l'histoire leur absolue contradiction en allant, parfois, jusqu'au crime, soit permis d'ouvrir le chemin de la vie libre sans être capables, cependant, de le tracer jusqu'au bout. Ces catégories ressortissent à un monde et à sa fable que les temps présents abandonnent au passé. Le problème constitutif de la philosophie politique - les conditions de la vie libre - n'a pas disparu pour autant, mais la solution nouvelle est à inventer. Une double tâche s'impose désormais : montrer en quoi la souveraineté est achevée et ce que cela signifie, jusque dans les chemins divergents qu'empruntent l'Europe et les Etats-Unis ; formuler des propositions sérieuses capables d'orienter le débat politique de notre temps quelle moralité nouvelle, autre que la souveraineté, inventer pour des peuples européens qui, faute de pouvoir encore se faire la guerre, se sont du coup, sans autre projet, abandonnés au marché? (shrink)

This essay discusses human rights from the standpoint of five outlooks dominant in our time by imaging five stylist ideal-typical countries. First, three countries in which the principle of defending human rights is unknown: Utilitaria, Communitaria and Proletaria. Each rejects human rights for a distinct set of reasons: the first because they conflict with utilitarian calculation, the second because they abstract from correct ways of living, the third because they soften hearts and are superfluous in a classless world. Accepting human (...) rights means departing from each of these standpoints in a given respect. First, we restrain the pursuit of social advantage, however enlightened or benevolent that pursuit. Second, we accept and protect the abstraction or distance of persons from specific, concrete ways of life. Third, we hold that the conditions of human life will never surmount scarcity, conflict of interests, moral divergences and limited rationality to render human rights superfluous. Next, two further countries are imagined in which human rights might be said to be respected: Libertaria and Egalitaria. The first represents a context of market freedoms, property rights, equal opportunity and civil rights but generates basic inequalities of condition and the sanctification of self-interest. The second is committed to rendering civil rights of equal worth to all and maintaining decent minimum standards for all, while striving for growth and improvement. But is Egalitaria feasible and viable? The incentives needed for growth give rise to inequalities, and the ideal of equal individual treatment conflicts with the communitarian goal of treating cultural identities as equal. These difficulties lead some away from Egalitaria back to Libertaria or Communitaria, but the essay concludes by suggesting that there is an »egalitarian plateau« that should not be abandoned for any of the other four possibilities. (shrink)

Zunächst werden Gemeinsamkeit und Unterschiede zu Malebranche hinsichtlich der Frage der Verbindung von größtmöglicher Einfachheit der Wege bzw. Gesetze und größtmöglicher Vielfalt der Erscheinungen erörtert. Im zweiten Teil wird die Erzählung von Sextus in der Théodicée behandelt. Insbesondere wird dargelegt, warum Leibniz diese Erzählung nicht, wie ursprünglich geplant, in der Mitte, sondern am Schluss der Théodicée einfügte.

Body metaphors and body fables were frequently used in ancient discourse for social communities and politics. This article will examine a body fable by the Greek fabulist Babrius that has been overlooked in research so far. It shows a remarkable similarity to 1 Corinthians 12 through the use of central terms such as σῶμα and μέλος or personified speaking body parts such as an eye and head. Even if no literary direct dependence is claimed, the text, which was written (...) at about the same time as 1 Corinthians, sheds light on Paul's understanding of the body fable. It becomes apparent, however, that the rhetorical function is fundamentally different in the two texts. Whilst the body fable in Babrius reinforces hierarchical structures, Paul emphasises the equality of the various body parts. The discussion about the 'implicit ethics' of these two texts is hermeneutically embedded in the current Corona crisis and the management of the crisis in different forms of organisation and state. CONTRIBUTION: The contribution makes the overlooked Babrius Fable 134, a body fable in political context, known in New Testament scholarship. A comparison with 1 Corinthians 12 points out that despite close analogies in plot and vocabulary, the message regarding the social structure diverges radically: While Babrius propagates a reinforcement of hierarchical leadership, 1 Corinthians 12 pleads for a community based on equivalence. (shrink)

Modern political theory begins with the rise of the philosophical concept and practice of sovereignty in the sixteenth century. Over the course of the next several centuries, sovereignty was generalized as _the _form of the modern state—eventually, there was no state that was not sovereign, and there was no understanding of the state that did not depend upon the notion of sovereignty. Yet, as Gérard Mairet argues in _The Fable of the World_, at this moment of the culmination of (...) political sovereignty, the limitations and dangers of this theory and practice have become all too apparent. Furthermore, Mairet believes that we have begun to see the glimmers of a new form of political community _beyond_ the sovereign state and its rootedness in inter-state violence: for Mairet, Europe has become the harbinger of a new _federative_ form of statehood. In this rigorous investigation of the notion of sovereignty from Bodin and Hobbes, through Rousseau and the Federalists, to Foucault and the framers of the European constitution, Mairet examines the articulation of the concept through the bloody history of European colonialism. He also shows how the reconstitution of the European political community after World War II marked the beginning of a new trajectory—one that offers the hope of a post-sovereign mode of political being-in-the-world. (shrink)

In our local school district some teachers have chosen to use fables as a way of integrating character education into their 4th and 5th grade curriculum. This paper about fables and philosophy illustrates how to employ philosophical inquiry to discuss the moral virtues. Aristotle’s remarks about the particular moral virtue of friendliness is a paradigmatic example for writing philosophy discussion plans that cultivate ethical judgment—one component of educating for moral character. However, the methodology I recommend can be generalized to stories (...) that are not fables, and also can be made appropriate for different grade levels. Included here is a lesson plan for Arnold Lobel’s fable “The Lobster and the Crab,” used in a 4th grade classroom. Also included is a short transcript of the students’ dialogue. (shrink)