Mandeville lives in a transitional age in which economics, morality and politics are not clearly distinguished. He emphasises the contrast between the emerging economic rationality and Christian ethics, between utilitarianism and strict ethics. The motto 'private vices, public benefits' highlights this contradiction. The Dutch philosopher is not an economist in the modern sense, but he questions the causes of the nation's wealth and adopts some of the assumptions of mercantilism, such as the importance of a surplus balance of trade and the policy of low wages. He argues that the primary cause of a nation's wealth is wage labour and is one of the first to grasp the importance of the division of labour. He distinguishes between two types of work: wage labour, which only concerns the poor and is performed out of sheer necessity, and self-employment, which, on the other hand, allows for the satisfaction of the fundamental passions of human nature, such as the desire to improve one's condition and to be esteemed.
University of Milan, Italy - ORCID: 0000-0002-7926-5487
Titolo del capitolo
Razionalità economica, lavoro salariato e divisione del lavoro in Mandeville
Autori
Mauro Simonazzi
Lingua
Italian
DOI
10.36253/979-12-215-0319-7.62
Opera sottoposta a peer review
Anno di pubblicazione
2024
Copyright
© 2024 Author(s)
Licenza d'uso
Licenza dei metadati
Titolo del libro
Idee di lavoro e di ozio per la nostra civiltà
Curatori
Giovanni Mari, Francesco Ammannati, Stefano Brogi, Tiziana Faitini, Arianna Fermani, Francesco Seghezzi, Annalisa Tonarelli
Opera sottoposta a peer review
Numero di pagine
1894
Anno di pubblicazione
2024
Copyright
© 2024 Author(s)
Licenza d'uso
Licenza dei metadati
Editore
Firenze University Press
DOI
10.36253/979-12-215-0319-7
ISBN Print
979-12-215-0245-9
eISBN (pdf)
979-12-215-0319-7
eISBN (epub)
979-12-215-0320-3
Collana
Studi e saggi
ISSN della collana
2704-6478
e-ISSN della collana
2704-5919