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

Representação: palavras, instituições e idéias Representation: words, institutions and ideas

Em argumento reconstrutivo, baseado em abordagem própria à filosofia da linguagem, a autora lança mão das transformações seculares nos usos da fala, nas cristalizações ideológicas no plano da filosofia política e nas práticas históricas de representação política para mostrar a emergência das feições distintivas da representação moderna.<br>In a reconstructive analysis, based upon the philosophy of language, the author handles the secular transformations in speech, ideological crystallizations within the tradition of political philosophy and the historical practices of political representation in order to show the coming up of the distinctive features of modern representation