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

Performing physiocracy: Pierre Samuel Du Pont de Nemours and the limits of political engineering

The story of Pierre Samuel Du Pont de Nemours has often been described as one of success. The man was a well-known statesman, economist and entrepreneur in late eighteenth-century France and his main legacy, the famous and still thriving Du Pont company, suggests a brilliant trajectory. The aim of this paper, however, is to analyze Du Pont's failure in performing the political and economic doctrine of which he was an active promoter all through his life: physiocracy. In all of his very diverse activities, be they scientific, political, or entrepreneurial, Du Pont indeed deliberately attempted to enact this original liberal doctrine. He tried, along with fellow physiocrats, to introduce freedom of trade and enterprise in Old Regime French minds and economic practices. Later, when emigrating to the United States, he devised a plan for a physiocratic colony. But none of these ventures was actually a success during Du Pont's lifetime: the performation of some of physiocracy's main propositions only came later, in a diffuse and partial way. We contend that this relative failure of performativity can be explained by Du Pont's specific type of agency: one relying mainly on political engineering, based on personal ties and reputations, as well as on a strict distinction between ends and means