The essay examines the diachronic use of beehive-images as iconic political metaphors and their related political aims. As the essay demonstrates, in Mandeville’s case the aim is that of defending the new Constitutional Monarchy (1688). The essay interprets Mandeville's extraordinary metaphor of 'The Fable of the Bees', as deriving directly from Bosse's etching of Hobbes's 'Leviathan'. Indeed, Mandeville rewrites the iconological defense of the authority of Bosse's image into the cypher of a shared-power model: his defense of the new parliamentary model and of its related political issues, the Reformed Church vs. Catholicism. It also claims Mandeville’s stature as one of the Fathers of the Enlightenment, with the Empiricist philosophers, endorsing their fight against innatism and its related world-image where the old static paradigms of authority – order and degree – still reigned. The beehive becomes through him the icon of a variety of swarming bees that can, if necessary, revolutionarily oust their Queen once she threatens to harm the well-being of the hive.

Beehive-Images and Politics in Bernard De Mandeville’s 'The Fable of the Bees': Empiricism vs Innatism

BEZRUCKA, Yvonne
2016-01-01

Abstract

The essay examines the diachronic use of beehive-images as iconic political metaphors and their related political aims. As the essay demonstrates, in Mandeville’s case the aim is that of defending the new Constitutional Monarchy (1688). The essay interprets Mandeville's extraordinary metaphor of 'The Fable of the Bees', as deriving directly from Bosse's etching of Hobbes's 'Leviathan'. Indeed, Mandeville rewrites the iconological defense of the authority of Bosse's image into the cypher of a shared-power model: his defense of the new parliamentary model and of its related political issues, the Reformed Church vs. Catholicism. It also claims Mandeville’s stature as one of the Fathers of the Enlightenment, with the Empiricist philosophers, endorsing their fight against innatism and its related world-image where the old static paradigms of authority – order and degree – still reigned. The beehive becomes through him the icon of a variety of swarming bees that can, if necessary, revolutionarily oust their Queen once she threatens to harm the well-being of the hive.
2016
iconology, images, law, image-politics, De Mandeville, Fable of the Bees, Locke, Hume, Bacon, Cruikshank, beehive iconology, beehive images, innatism, empiricism, enlightenment
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11562/944270
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