The two themes that Mandeville’s poem “Fable of the Bees” and other poems have in common are unselfishness and morality. In his poem Mandeville challenges the sacred idea of social morality through the use of religious ethics where he compares the religious leaders with a queen bee whom if people could follow, they could make much progress. His work contradicts previous works by Aristotle and Plato, who postulated that self-interest conducted by individuals in power sometimes is morally wrong. Similarly, the Federalists argued that management requires control to instill morality and impose unselfish actions by different branches of the government (Vandenberg & DeHart, 2015).
According to Mandeville’s poems, human nature should focus on relinquishing self-interest and on sacrifices that promote the morality and sanity of the society to ensure that there are checks and balances in the system.
In pursuit of self-interest, Mandeville uses bees to demonstrate how organized and detailed activities of the bees are equal to the actions of human society. In the poem, greed, selfishness, and pursuit of material gain seem to dominate human nature. In addition, Federalists noted that material selflessness and the urge to acquire wealth leads to stagnation and decay of societal morals. According to the two articles, humans should live a simple moral life free of personal desires and selfish mentality.
During the drafting of the constitution by the federalists, it was clear that production, demand, and supply of goods, innovation, and improvements stopped when one arm of government outdid another component (Vandenberg & DeHart, 2015). Thus, the unselfishness and morality themes in Mandeville’s poem and Federalists’ paper demonstrate how the society becomes poor and stagnant when there is erosion of morals.
Mandeville’s poems explore human nature, which should focus on relinquishing self-interest and promoting morality and sanity to ensure progress and peace in society. The unselfishness theme describes how human beings, unlike bees, cannot forego their wants and work towards a collective goal. Similarly, lack of collaborative thinking and tolerance erodes societal morals because leaders tend to act based on their gains rather than helping to alleviate the problems affecting their people. The rationale in the poems and the Federalists’ paper suggests that people should leave selfish behaviors and becomes one another’s keeper. Thus, people should emulate the teamwork of a bee colony and work together to improve each other’s lives.
Reference
Vandenberg, P., & DeHart, A. (2015). Bernard Mandeville (1670—1733). In Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: A peer-reviewed article (1st ed.). Grand Valley State University.