Excessive self-esteem, and the social consequences of Mandeville’s analysis : a comment on Robin Douglass’s Mandeville’s Fable

This is a self-archived version of an original article. This version may differ from the original in pagination and typographic details. Author(s): Title: Year: Version: Copyright: Rights: Rights url: Please cite the original version: CC BY 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Excessive self-esteem, and the social consequences of Mandeville’s analysis : a comment on Robin Douglass’s Mandeville’s Fable © 2024 the Authors Published version Chadwick, Alexandra Chadwick, A. (2024). Excessive self-esteem, and the social consequences of Mandeville’s analysis : a comment on Robin Douglass’s Mandeville’s Fable. History of European Ideas, Early online. https://doi.org/10.1080/01916599.2024.2373672 2024 Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rhei20 History of European Ideas ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: www.tandfonline.com/journals/rhei20 Excessive self-esteem, and the social consequences of Mandeville’s analysis: a comment on Robin Douglass’s Mandeville’s Fable Alexandra Chadwick To cite this article: Alexandra Chadwick (18 Jul 2024): Excessive self-esteem, and the social consequences of Mandeville’s analysis: a comment on Robin Douglass’s Mandeville’s Fable, History of European Ideas, DOI: 10.1080/01916599.2024.2373672 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/01916599.2024.2373672 © 2024 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group Published online: 18 Jul 2024. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 31 View related articles View Crossmark data REVIEW ARTICLE Excessive self-esteem, and the social consequences of Mandeville’s analysis: a comment on Robin Douglass’s Mandeville’s Fable Alexandra Chadwick Department of Social Sciences and Philosophy, University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland ABSTRACT This contribution to a roundtable on Robin Douglass’s Mandeville’s Fable: Pride, Hypocrisy and Sociability (Princeton University Press, 2023) focuses on two themes raised in the book. First, Mandeville’s definition of pride is over-valuing oneself. I ask whether Mandeville seriously entertains the possibility that high self-esteem can be justified, and I consider how his position might compare with that of Hobbes. The second theme concerns Mandeville’s claim that pride is the ‘hidden spring’ behind all human actions. Douglass’s Mandeville sees some social benefit in exposing expressions of moral concern as ultimately motivated by pride. I query the alleged benefit to be found here and ask whether and how Mandeville’s position differs from present-day claims that moral statements are fundamentally motivated by a desire for social approval. KEYWORDS Mandeville; self-esteem; Hobbes 1. The book is a pleasure to read: it remains focused and engaging without compromising on the careful interrogation of arguments and terminology, and has an admirably clear and effective structure. No doubt it will be of importance for those working on Mandeville, and it will surely prove fascinating and helpful for those of us interested in ideas of pride and sociability, and in early modern moral psychology and moral philosophy more generally. The book also seems to offer a helpful way into Mandeville scholarship, since Professor Douglass clearly and concisely outlines the interpretative debates to which he makes his own contribution. When reading the book, I found that many questions I had were addressed by Douglass a few pages later, and if they were not addressed directly, then his clear explanations of elements of Mandeville’s theories, combined with the extensive references provided, offered the resources to piece together a possible answer. Here I raise some small questions on two themes that I would be grateful to hear more about. First, Mandeville’s definition of pride as over-valuing oneself; second, the consequences of his pride-centred account of motivation for society (and relatedly, his reasons for writing). 1.1. Pride as excessive self-esteem Mandeville defines pride as ‘that Natural Faculty by which every Mortal that has any Understanding over-values, and imagines better Things of himself than any impartial Judge, thoroughly acquainted with all his Qualities and Circumstances, could allow him’. This is pride as an inflated sense of self- © 2024 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent. CONTACT Alexandra Chadwick [email protected] HISTORY OF EUROPEAN IDEAS https://doi.org/10.1080/01916599.2024.2373672 esteem. He also understands pride as ‘Concern for [our] Reputation’: this is pride as a desire for social esteem. Douglass helpfully explains that ‘We can join the dots between Mandeville’s definition of pride and the emphasis he places on reputation by recognising that our sense of self-esteem is rarely, if ever, independent of how other people regard us’. We care about how others see us because their positive response enables us, in Douglass’s words, to ‘sustain a high opinion of oneself’ (29–30): it might even be the case that this high opinion ‘depends on the views that other people hold of us’ (6, my italics). Douglass notes that ‘Perhaps in some cases we are justified in holding a high opinion of ourselves, but these would not count as pride on [Mandeville’s] definition’ (29). Yet sometimes Douglass seems to equate a high valuation with an over-valuation (see e.g. 32–33). I take it that this reflects an ambiguity in Mandeville’s own position. Does Mandeville seriously entertain the possibility that a high opinion of oneself can be justified? The answer to this would be another point to add to the list of ways in which Mandeville agrees, or disagrees, with Augustine (see Douglass’s related remarks on p. 85 and fn. 110 concerning the possibility of a ‘well-regulated desire for esteem’). The question comes into focus again when Douglass discusses Mandeville’s concept of ‘self-liking’. ‘Self-liking’, Douglass writes, is ‘first and foremost, the high esteem we have for ourselves’ (36). He later quotes a passage in which Mandeville distinguishes between a ‘moderate and well regulated’ self-liking and its ‘excessive’ form, which is pride (65). For Mandeville, however, ‘it remains the case that we must disguise our self-liking’, Douglass notes, because ‘there is still something about the high esteem we have for ourselves that cannot be displayed without causing offence’ (66). Hence displays of both high self-esteem and excessive esteem provoke conflict – we do not like to see people thinking highly of themselves – but only the latter counts as pride. The distinction between pride and a well-regulated ‘sense of self-worth’ (as Douglass puts it [66]) seems close to a distinction Hobbes makes between ‘pride’ and ‘confidence’. Given that Douglass is an expert on Hobbes as well as Mandeville, I hope that some comparison of the two is appropriate here, as I would be keen to hear more about how he understands the philosophers’ concepts of pride to relate to one another. Pride, for Hobbes, is ‘great vaine-Glory’: pleasure arising from an unrealistically high assessment of one’s abilities. When our assessment of our abilities is not unrealistic, but is instead ‘grounded upon the experience of [our] own former actions’, the pleasure we feel is not pride but ‘Confidence’. 1 Hence in both Mandeville and Hobbes there is an attempt to introduce an objective standard for distinguishing between a high estimation and an overestimation of oneself: for Hobbes, it is evidence of past achievements, for Mandeville it is the opinion of an ‘impartial Judge’. However, in both cases this objective standard is of little relevance to social life: what matters is what those with whom we are interacting think. In Hobbes’s case, when we observe the signs of someone’s high opinion of himself, such as ‘ostentation in words, and insolency in actions’, the passion motivating those words and actions is called pride ‘by them whom it displeaseth … by them whom it pleaseth, it is termed a just valuation of himself’. 2 If for Mandeville, by contrast, all displays of self-liking cause offence, is it fair to say that an (unconcealed) high sense of self-worth is a greater threat to social life for Mandevillean humans than it is for even their Hobbesian counterparts? Finally, Hobbes offers another definition of pride in his account of natural law: ‘for the ninth Law of Nature, I put this, That every man acknowledge other for his Equall by Nature. The breach of this Precept is Pride’. 3 At least on one interpretation of this, high self-esteem that spills over into a display of superiority counts as pride, even if it is based on a realistic assessment of our achievements, because there is a more fundamental equality between human beings, which the prideful individual overlooks when they focus on their own supposed high value. Does Mandeville have anything to say about equality that might illuminate what it means to over-value oneself? 1.2. The consequences of Mandeville’s pride-centred account of motivation Mandeville thinks that pride is a ‘hidden Spring, that gives Life and Motion to all [our] Actions’ (54). Even when we think we are acting out of ‘public spirited or other-regarding motives’ (88), we are 2 A. CHADWICK really chasing social approval to support our inflated self-esteem. Douglass addresses the consequences of accepting Mandeville’s analysis as true, along with the related question of his (Mandeville’s) aims in providing it, at several points in the book. He notes in the Preface that Mandeville’s claim that pride motivates our actions is ‘unsettling’ and ‘leaves you questioning yourself’. Moreover, within the terms of Mandeville’s philosophy, revealing the extent to which pride motivates us is potentially devastating for society, since ‘[o]ur social practices and moral standards rely on channelling our self-centred passions – pride and shame, above all else – and giving them the outwards appearance of other-regarding or public-spirited sentiments’ (130). Revealing the trick could undermine the system. However, Douglass claims that Mandeville’s aim is to ‘expose how human societies really function’ (90), and that the consequences of that exposure are not his concern. For Mandeville, unlike many moral philosophers contemporary to him, ‘there is no reason to assume that truth and utility will necessarily converge, which is to say that we might have to choose, to some degree at least, between an accurate analysis of human nature and one which encourages a certain type of conduct’ (127). Faced with this choice, Douglass’s Mandeville opted for (what he judged to be) the accurate analysis. Nevertheless, Douglass also raises the possibility that Mandeville might have seen some social benefit in ‘accentuat[ing] the negative aspects of human nature … for there is at least something to be said for humbling the pride and exposing the hypocrisy behind the moralising bluster of his adversaries, whose calls for moral reform and admonitions against vice would, if heeded, undermine the basis of economic prosperity’ (128). Mandeville believed that there was such a thing as virtue, Douglass tells us, but thought it requires a ‘victory over the passions’ that humans are simply not capable of (121). Douglass draws a comparison here with present-day ethical theories that demand ’more than can plausibly be expected on a realistic analysis of our moral psychology’ – among which are those that claim ‘that individuals have far-reaching duties to alleviate widespread human (and animal) suffering or to combat climate change’ (123). He goes on to note that ‘it is easy to imagine Mandeville satirising the haughty moralism of some proponents of those views today, but, on my interpretation, the object of his ridicule would be the hypocrisy of the proponents, not the ethical position itself’ (123, fn. 118). Ridiculing the supposed hypocrisy of one’s moral opponents seems to be a strategy much used today. (You say refugees are welcome, but you have a spare room in your house; you say the planet is on fire, but you own a car, therefore your moralising must be driven by a desire for social approval, rather than concern for others.) I wonder to what extent Douglass thinks we can see Mandeville in this? If the result of Mandeville’s focus on how a concern for reputation motivates us is to present all expressions of moral concern as insincere, then his theory is unsettling not only for the way it leaves us questioning our own motives, but also for the way it undermines our ability to talk about urgent moral concerns – much less to act to address them. In this way, Mandeville’s theory seems to support some of the most socially divisive and environmentally destructive narratives around today. Is this a fair assessment? If it is, that is no reason, of course, not to take the theory seriously. But it does seem to make the question of Mandeville’s intentions worthy of more comment, in order for the reader to judge how and to what extent they translate to our own time and places. Notes 1. Leviathan, ed. Noel Malcolm (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), ch. 8, p. 112; ch. 6, p. 88. 2. The Elements of Law, ed. Ferdinand Tönnies, (London: Simpkin, Marshall, and Co., 1889), I.9.1. 3. Leviathan, ch. 15 p. 234. See also The Elements I.17.1; and On the Citizen, ed. Richard Tuck, trans. Michael Silverthorne (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), III.13. Disclosure statement No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s). HISTORY OF EUROPEAN IDEAS 3