[SOLO] The Fable of the Bees by Bernard Mandeville - philc

[mmunoz]

Mandeville sure is all over the place, touching on just about any subject conceivable, in this book. :lol:

He can't seem to help it, even where his background knowledge is weak. In this one, he contrasts Huitzilopochtli with pagan sun gods, not realizing that that's exactly what Huitzilopochtli is.

Section 44 is ready for PL.

Edit: It occurs to me that there might not have even been sources of accurate information about Aztec gods at the time in England (but I'm too lazy to find out).

[LCaulkins]

44 is PL OK

[mmunoz]

Section 45 is ready for PL.

[LCaulkins]

Section 45 is PL OK

[mmunoz]

Section 46 is ready for PL.

[LCaulkins]

46 is PL OK

Hehe - My husband is working at home these days, and my cold makes my ears hurt if I use headphones, so he's been overhearing the past couple sections:

"What??? Why is the author using Roman names to discuss early modern British concerns???" I told him he's missed out on all kinds of trippy stuff from Mandeville

[mmunoz]

Sorry to hear you're under the weather. Hopefully this last section doesn't disappoint in terms of trippiness.

Section 47 is ready for PL.

There's what I think is an f/s mistake (from the OCR?) at about 22:39, so I read it as "sellers."

[LCaulkins]

And that's a wrap!!

Section 47 is PL OK

(yes, that definitely must be a long-s transcription error)

Good job reading all of this - I admit that Mandeville makes my head spin. I can see why his statements were upsetting to society at the time, and so many of his premises seem fallible, but I don't have the philosophic or forensic training to begin countering him .

Thanks for letting me PL for you!

[mmunoz]

It's hard to keep up with where the "satire" ends and the freethinking/atheism-in-disguise begins, but in general I think you're right; I doubt if much of this book could stand up to contemporary scrutiny without the smokescreen of moral outrage.

But there are methodological bits really worth preserving in it, similar to the famous Adam Ferguson quote: social institutions "are indeed the result of human action, but not the execution of any human design."

Thanks for letting me PL for you!

No, thank you. I have to admit, I didn't realize going into this how much work was involved, either for reading or proof-listening.

(Thanks to Phil and linny too.)

[philchenevert]

This project is complete and can be found in our catalog at https://librivox.org/the-fable-of-the-bees-by-bernard-mandeville/

A very important addition to our catalog. Kudos to everyone involved