Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://bura.brunel.ac.uk/handle/2438/7795
Title: The fables of pity: Rousseau, Mandeville and the animal-fable
Authors: Gaston, S
Issue Date: 2012
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Citation: Derrida Today, 5(1), 21-38, 2012
Abstract: Prompted by Derrida’s work on the animal-fable in eighteenth-century debates about political power, this article examines the role played by the fiction of the animal in thinking of pity as either a natural virtue (in Rousseau’s Second Discourse) or as a natural passion (in Mandeville’s The Fable of the Bees). The war of fables between Rousseau and Mandeville – and their hostile reception by Samuel Johnson and Adam Smith – reinforce that the animal-fable illustrates not so much the proper of man as the possibilities and limitations of a moral philosophy that is unable to address the political realities of the state.
Description: Copyright @ 2012 Edinburgh University Press
URI: http://www.euppublishing.com/doi/abs/10.3366/drt.2012.0026
http://bura.brunel.ac.uk/handle/2438/7795
ISSN: 1754-8500
Appears in Collections:English and Creative Writing
Dept of Arts and Humanities Research Papers

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