Abstract:Gabriel Bonnot de Mably (1709-1785) takes up the republican commonplace that the desire for esteem is what could motivate the fulfilment of duties of civic virtue. This commonplace, however, has become problematic through the discussion of the problem of human corruption in philosophers such as Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) and Nicolas Malebranche (1638Malebranche ( -1715. In this article, I will show that Mably takes this problem seriously. However, his critique of Malebranche's solution to this problem and his c… Show more
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