"Vicios privados, beneficios públicos" o la diestra administración del legislador utilitarista

Jimena Hurtado Prieto

Lecturas de Economía, 2004, issue 61, 71-99

Abstract: This article explores the connection between Bernard Mandeville and Jeremy Bentham. Their analyses are complementary on two points: first, the descriptive sense of the utility principle, main axiom of Bentham's utilitarianism, relies on an implicit anthropological conception which Mandeville explains in detail. Second, the latter's great lesson is that “private vices by the dextrous management of a skillful politician may be turned into public benefits”. Bentham's art of legislation allows understanding of “the dextrous management and knowing” “who the skillful politician is”. Furthermore, Mandeville accounts for the emergence of the legislator, central figure in his theory as well as in Bentham's because it guarantees social cohesion.

Keywords: Bernard Mandeville; Jeremy Bentham; legislator; human nature; social cohesion (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: B11 B12 B31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2004
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://revistas.udea.edu.co/index.php/lecturasdeeconomia/issue/view/326 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:lde:journl:y:2004:i:61:p:71-99

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
Lecturas de Economía, Departamento de Economía, Calle 67, 53-108, Medellin 050010, Colombia.

Access Statistics for this article

Lecturas de Economía is currently edited by Carlos Andrés Vasco Correa

More articles in Lecturas de Economía from Universidad de Antioquia, Departamento de Economía Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Carlos Andrés Vasco Correa ().