Imagining utopia–and condemning excess–during the Enlightenment

laphamsquarterly.org

32 points·pepys··5 comments

For a rebuttal to the critiques of excess found here, I recommend Mandeville's The Fable of the Bees (which Keynes references in the General Theory).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fable_of_the_Bees

I do think it's worth contextualizing such debates about vice and virtue in the politics of the time. Court-favorites like the Duke of Marlborough (whom Mandeville defends here) using war to enrich themselves. Naturally this irked wealthy gentry who loathed the associated taxes and had rival commercial interests.

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Always fascinating to learn when issues we still debate today have been on the minds of humans for many centuries prior

We're still debating the worth of kings and queens. There were cavemen who would think that we're superstitious and primitive.

So either (a) we're dumb and pathetic, or (b) these issues are more complicated than we give them credit for.

For example, even though my personal opinion is that royalty is an abomination, how can I be so sure that the evolution of human social organization didn't require that particular structure? What if social organization is just a hard optimization problem, and king/queen rule is a temporary equilibrium state?

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