Mikko Tolonen, “Mandeville, Hayek and Politics of Self-esteem” (October 2020)
Welcome to our October 2020 edition of Liberty Matters. In this essay and discussion forum Mikko Tolonen, Associate Professor of Digital Humanities at the University of Helsinki, discusses the work of Bernard Mandeville, one of the most original thinkers and personalities of the 18th century. Tolonen discusses various aspects of Mandeville’s thought, in particular the insight concerning people’s faith in their own opinions and their inability to be impartial in moral and political matters. Tolonen then compares Mandeville’s critique of human knowledge with F.A. Hayek’s well known discussion of the limits of human reason. According to Tolonen, Hayek’s work on the use of knowledge deftly compares Rousseau’s view of rationality with Mandeville’s Scottish Enlightenment thinking. His provocative essay, and the three excellent response essays from our other contributors, raise interesting questions about the way in which ideas transcend various eras, particularly those that describe human nature and the norms that dictate human behavior in markets.