qui - maria vita romeo

e other Mandeville: the origins of a scandalous thought. Mechanism, ecc. 65
therefore the enquiry for causation must start from effects and not inversely.
We are dealing with an empirical-inductive method that, moving from
specific objects—for example a particular disease or case study—builds
through reason limited by the same object a causal explanation, which can
be made universal but not absolute. 44 e denial of a priori knowledge—
and with it the necessary adherence to investigated objects—leads implicitly
to the devaluation of right reason. According to Mandeville, in medicine,
it is necessary to measure the observation to objectivity, an objectivity
that has not clear boundaries. From here springs the criticism about reason,
intended as “idol;” 45 this faculty is praised because of physicians’
pride, which is, at last, a common characteristic—or better a passion—of
mankind. is preliminary discussion can clarify why Mandeville considers
medicine an “Art” and not a “Science.” In a case study—as, generically, in
a detailed observation—the object of research is seldom certain; actually,
an observer can come against a lack of the anatomical description and, at
the same time, a linguistic lack in denotation of the elements that constitute
the same object: the human body. 46 So the language is lacking of
words for describing the littlest parts of the anatomical framework 47 or, on
the other side, the object hides itself showing effects that need other, not
observable, physiological factors, which however receive an attribution of
meaning. In this way language exceeds empirical data. is is the case of
“animal spirits” that, not being experimentally observable, can be supposed
through the expedient of the “Eye of reason.” is solution gives, from the
beginning, some problems inasmuch as Mandeville in the 1730 edition
adds almost twenty pages to explain the function and the relation of “ani-
44 For a more extensive discussion about Mandeville’s empirical method, see A. Chiessi, Mandeville
e la necessità dei vizi: ricchezza e corruzione, in P. Vincieri (ed), Corruzione, decadenza, declino,
Bologna, d.u.press, 2011, pp. 167-197, especially pp. 169-182.
45 Cf. Treatise 1711, pp. 53-54; Treatise 1730, p. 62.
46 On these arguments, the paradigmatic discussion is the one showing the differences between
mathematics and medicine; cf. Treatise 1730, p. 183.
47 is lack is also felt in the formulation of the distinction between “Self-love” and “Self-liking,”
where just “Self-liking” is a neologism created for explaining the social relations between individuals.
Cf. Fable II, pp. 129-132, and B. Mandeville, An Enquiry into the Origin of the Honour and
the usefulness of Christianity in War, London, printed for John Brotherton, at the Bible in Cornhill,
1732, pp. 3-7 (hereafter quoted as An Enquiry into the Origin of the Honour).