A Story of Three Fables: Mandeville, Montesquieu, and Spinoza on the Development of Secular Morality

With the development of secular moral philosophy in the seventeenth century, moral philosophers began to explain morality as originating not in God’s plan but rather in nature, often in human ends and planning. A central challenge for this view was explaining how natural or human moral standards derive legitimacy and authority. In early modern moral philosophy, these issues played out dramatically in the genre of moral genealogy, which often took the form of fables. This paper examines how three fables addressed these issues: Mandeville’s fable of the bees, Montesquieu’s fable of the Troglodytes, and Spinoza’s “fable” about the origin of moral concepts from artifacts. This examination will show that secular or secular-leaning early modern moral philosophy pursued two general strategies for explaining the natural origins of morality and, consequently, its legitimacy and authority.