This article rereads Bernard Mandeville’s infamous poem The Fable of the Bees: or, Private Vices Publick Benefits (1714; 1723; 1729) and Emilie du Châtelet’s French translation (1735-1738) in the context of the eighteenth-century debates around the differences between humans and animals. It argues that the considerable alterations to the text undertaken by Châtelet should be understood as a response to Mandeville’s vitalistic theories of physical and political bodies, and their implications for his theory of political economy. Through close readings of the two versions of the Fable, the article shows that Châtelet’s reworking circumvents the idea – central to Mandeville’s text – that all living bodies, whether human or animal, are interconnected systems animated by vital ‘spirits’. I thus use Mandeville’s and Châtelet’s texts as a window for exploring the implications of different positions in the debate on the animal-human hierarchy.

本文在十八世纪围绕围绕两者之间的差异展开辩论的背景下，重新阅读了伯纳德·曼德维尔的臭名昭著的诗《蜜蜂的寓言：或者私人罪恶公共福利》（1714； 1723； 1729）和埃米莉·杜沙特莱特的法语译本（1735-1738）。人类和动物。它认为，沙特莱特对案文进行的大量改动应被理解为对曼德维尔的物质和政治机构的生命主义理论的回应，以及对曼德维尔的政治经济学理论的启示。通过仔细阅读寓言的两个版本，该文章表明，沙特莱（Châtelet）的重制绕开了这一想法（这是曼德维尔著作的核心内容），即所有生命体，无论是人还是动物，都是由重要的“精神”赋予生命的相互联系的系统。因此，我将曼德维尔（Mandeville）和沙特莱特（Châtelet）的文本用作探讨动物-人类等级体系辩论中不同立场的含义的窗口。