Current research:

 

My PhD-research at the EUI concerns the political thought of the Dutch brothers Johan and Pieter de la Court (1622-1660/1618-1685), two textile entrepreneurs from the town of Leiden who published a number of political treatises between 1660 and 1685. These works center on a qualification of man as a slave to his passions, as a being primarily directed at the fulfillment of his own self-interest. On the basis of this assumption, the De la Courts constructed a theory characterized by a strong plea in favor of republican popular government, religious tolerance, free trade and peaceful international relations. Situated somewhere in between Hobbes and Spinoza, they were particularly inspired by Italian political writers such as Machiavelli and Trajano Boccalini, and in their turn enjoyed continuing international influence throughout the eighteenth-century, from Mandeville to James Madison.