Gardens of happiness: Sir William Temple, temperance and China

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Taylor & Francis via the DOI in this recordSir William Temple, an English statesman and humanist, wrote “Upon the Gardens of Epicurus” in 1685, taking a neo-epicurean approach to happiness and temperance. In accord with Pierre Gassendi’s epicureanism, “happiness” is characterised as freedom from disturbance and pain in mind and body, whereas “temperance” means following nature (Providence and one’s physiopsychological constitution). For Temple, cultivating fruit trees in his garden was analogous to the threefold cultivation of temperance as a virtue in the humoral body (as food), the mind (as freedom from the passions), and the bodyeconomic (as circulating goods) in order to attain happiness. A regimen that was supposed to cure the malaise of Restoration amidst a crisis of unbridled passions, this threefold cultivation of temperance underlines Temple’s reception of China and Confucianism wherein happiness and temperance are highlighted. Thus Temple’s “gardens of happiness” represent not only a reinterpretation of classical ideas, but also his dialogue with China.European CommissionLeverhulme Trus

On Sale, Securities, and Insurance

This translation is a selection from Lessius’ treatment of contract law in his larger work On Justice and Right. By drawing on diverse sources ranging from Roman and canon law to moral philosophy, Lessius offers practical advice in commercial and financial matters. These chapters on sale, securities, and insurance engage perennial questions concerning the lawfulness of insider trading, the sale of toxic debt, and asymmetric information in insurance markets

De beroepsaansprakelijkheid van de advocaat in Lenaert Leys' Over rechtvaardigheid en recht

peer reviewe

Diet and Hygiene Between Ethics and Medicine: Evidence and the Reception of Alvise Cornaro\u2019s La Vita Sobria in Early Seventeenth-Century England

Alvise Cornaro\u2019s Treatises on the Sober Life (Discorsi della vita sobria) was one of the most popular books on diet and hygiene across the whole of Europe from its publication in the sixteenth century up to the early twentieth century. In this chapter, I show that the reasons for the success of Cornaro\u2019s work in early modern England lie in the fact that two very different communities of practice saw the work\u2019s conclusions as grounded upon a particular configuration of evidence that resonated with them: one spiritual, where it was used as part of an attempt to forge a via media between Puritans and Anglicans; the other medical, where it served as a case study from which more general conclusions about how to prolong life might be extrapolated. The unique context in which the first English translation of the Discorsi was conceived, produced, and published\u2014involving some of the most prominent intellectual figures of the time, such as Francis Bacon, Nicholas Ferrar, and George Herbert\u2014make this an important case study, useful for the reconstruction of a significant chapter of the history of dieting and hygiene, and the history of conceptions of evidence and their relationship to different communities of practice