A Letter to Dion

The work opens as a spirited reply to Bishop Berkeley’s dialogue Alciphron, in which the host Dion presides over a clash of ideas. Bernard Mandeville takes the podium to defend the controversial positions he outlined in The Fable of the Bees, arguing that luxury and even vice can be engines of economic growth. The letter is less a polished treatise than a sharp, conversational counter‑attack, filled with wit and the kind of pointed sarcasm that made the original debate so lively.

Listeners will find a vivid portrait of an 18th‑century intellectual showdown, where questions about human nature, the morality of profit, and the limits of religious critique are aired without dull abstraction. Mandeville’s advocacy of a rigorist moral stance—whether genuine or feigned—sparks a lively tension that illuminates the era’s philosophical currents. Though the piece never became a bestseller, its literary flair and the glimpse it offers into a pivotal exchange between two great thinkers make it a rewarding, if rare, listen.