ELISABETH, PRINCESS OF BOHEMIA
(1618–1680)

Elisabeth Simmern van Pallandt was born in Heidelberg on December 26, 1618, the third child and eldest daughter of Frederick V of Bohemia and Elisabeth Stuart, daughter of James I of England. Her parents' marriage represented the rising political strength of Protestantism. In August of 1620, Elisabeth's father, Frederick, departed Heidelberg for Prague to assume the position of Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. In November 1620, Frederick lost the battle of White Mountain and with it his empire; he was forced into exile. This event is usually taken as the onset of the Thirty Years War. In the late 1620s Elisabeth joined her parents in The Hague. There, she was tutored by the Dutch humanist Constantijn Huygens and the mathematician Johan Stampioen. She also interacted with Anna Maria van Schurman. She was accomplished in Greek, Latin, German, English and French. Throughout her life, she was involved in her family's political affairs. In 1660, Elisabeth entered the Lutheran convent at Herford in the Rhine Valley. She died on February 8, 1680, as abbess of the convent.

Several of her siblings were accomplished as well. Her older brother Charles Louis rehabilitated Heidelberg University after the Thirty Years War. Her brother Rupert was known for his chemical experiments, his soldiering, and his role in founding the Hudson's Bay Company. Her sister Louise Hollandine was an accomplished painter. Her youngest sister Sophie through her marriage became Electress of Hanover and corresponded with Leibniz and Diderot among others.

In 1643 Elisabeth began a correspondence with René Descartes that continued until Descartes's death in 1650. This exchange constitutes the whole of Elisabeth's extant philosophical work. However, record of Elisabeth's intellectual interests predates this correspondence. Edward Reynolds dedicates his Treatise of the Passions and the Faculties of the Soule of Man to Elisabeth, suggesting that she had seen and commented on a draft manuscript. In the 1660s the British mathematician John Pell contacted Elisabeth, through Theodore Haak, regarding her solution to Appolonius's Problem (that of finding a fourth circle whose circumference touches three given circles) undertaken in her correspondence with Descartes. In the 1670s, after Elisabeth had become abbess at Herford, she was contacted by English Quakers and corresponded with William Penn and Robert Barclay. She was also in contact with Nicholas Malebranche, Francis Mercury van Helmont, and G. W. F. Leibniz.

In the seven years of their correspondence, Elisabeth and Descartes address the full scope of philosophical inquiry. They discuss metaphysics, as well as topics in natural philosophy, including physics, geometry, and medicine. Equally, their exchange includes discussions of moral psychology, ethics, and political philosophy. Because all we have of Elisabeth's philosophical writings are her letters to Descartes, and those letters principally involve reactions to his work, it is hard to determine Elisabeth's own positions. Nonetheless, by considering the presuppositions of her questions and objections, it is possible to adduce her philosophical commitments.

Elisabeth, in her letter of May 6, 1643, begins the exchange by asking Descartes how the two really distinct substances of mind and body can causally interact with one another to effect voluntary action. That is, she poses the problem of mind-body interaction. Elisabeth's problem lies in understanding the nature of the causation at work between an immaterial substance (mind) and a material one (body). It is clear from her posing of the question, and her subsequent pressing of Descartes about his answers, that Elisabeth is willing to accept only efficient causal explanations of mind-body interaction. Insofar as she is skeptical that any such explanation can be offered of the interaction between an immaterial mind and body, she is inclined to think that the mind is material, but nonetheless has a capacity for thought.

Elisabeth's questions about mind-body interaction demonstrate her commitment to a mechanist account of the natural world and shows her to be well-versed in the varieties of mechanist accounts of causation available to adopt. This interest in natural philosophy is perhaps best reflected in Descartes's dedication to her of his Principles of Philosophy, the work in which he lays out his physics most clearly. It is also reflected in her remarks regarding human physiology and observed natural phenomena later in the correspondence.

In 1645, in part to help Elisabeth find some comfort from the effects of the English Civil War on her family, Descartes undertook to outline his views on moral psychology—the regulation of the passions—and the nature of the sovereign good. For him, the sovereign good consists simply in virtue, which Descartes takes to be simply a firm and constant will to do all that we judge to be the best. Once again, Elisabeth raises pointed objections. Here she is concerned with preserving the traditional tie between virtue and contentment. On Descartes's account, she charges, virtue would be insufficient for contentment. Given that our knowledge is incomplete, our best judgments would inevitably be wrong sometimes, and on those occasions we would regret our actions. Elisabeth takes this regret to be incompatible with virtue. Our incomplete knowledge also raises another problem for her, that of measuring the value of things. While Elisabeth admits the passions to be sources of value, she also recognizes that different individuals evaluate things differently. For her, the central problem of ethics is not achieving the sovereign good but rather reconciling competing evaluations of things. Her interest in the passions as sources of value leads her to request Descartes to enumerate and describe all the passions. In response, Descartes drafted his last work, The Passions of the Soul. Descartes sent this portion of the correspondence, including Elisabeth's letters, to Queen Christina of Sweden when she requested his views on the sovereign good.

Elisabeth and Descartes also address the problem of reconciling free will with determinism. Whereas Descartes asserts that human freedom is consistent with divine providence, though how it is so might escape us, for Elisabeth simply asserting that the two are consistent is insufficient. In addition, Elisabeth's request that Descartes lay out some maxims for civil life results in an extended discussion of Machiavelli's The Prince and the obligations of a good ruler to his subjects.

See also Descartes, René; Metaphysics.

Bibliography

Descartes, René. Oeuvres. Vols. 3–5, edited by Charles Adam and Paul Tannery. Paris: Vrin, 1996.

Elisabeth, Princess of Bohemia. Elisabeth, Princess of Bohemia and René Descartes: Their Correspondence. Translated by Lisa Shapiro. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, forthcoming (expected publication in 2006).

Penn, William. An Account of W. Penn's Travails in Holland and Germany, Anno MDCLXXVII. London: T. Sowle, 1695 and 1714.

Reynolds, Edward. Treatise of the Passions and the Faculties of the Soule of Man. London: Robert Bostock, 1640. Facsimile reproduction, edited by Margaret Lee Wiley, Gainseville, FL: Scholars' Facsimiles and Reprints, 1971.

Broad, Jacqueline. Women Philosophers of the Seventeenth Century. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2002.

Shapiro, Lisa. "Princess Elizabeth and Descartes: The Union of Soul and Body and the Practice of Philosophy." British Journal for the History of Philosophy 7 (3) (1999): 503–520.

Tollefson, Deborah. "Princess Elisabeth and the Problem of Mind-Body Interaction." Hypatia 14 (3) (1999): 59–77.

Lisa Shapiro (2005)