Abstract
The correspondence between Descartes and Elisabeth contains the analysis of different female bodies: that of Elisabeth, that of Descartes’ mother, and that of the pregnant woman. The study of their appearances shows that the idea of a weak sex is not Cartesian. For Elisabeth, the idea has a certain validity at first (I refuse to see it as merely a rhetorical device), but the exercise of philosophy, her discussions with Descartes as a doctor of both the soul and the body, allow the patient Elisabeth to recover all her strength. She becomes the symbolic incarnation not of the new philosophy but of an essential thesis of that philosophy according to which scholars are not the true sages. Behind the description of a body and a sensitive and sometimes sick soul, the correspondence also, and above all, allows to see the expression of a very powerful faculty of reasoning.
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Notes
- 1.
“Knowing that you are the best doctor for my soul, I expose to you quite freely the weaknesses of its speculations” (6 May 1643, AT III, 662; S 62).
- 2.
Lisa Shapiro proposes two possible interpretations of this reference made by Elisabeth to the “weaknesses of her sex”: “either she has internalized a kind of sexism or (…) she sounds a note of irony to bring out a certain sexism on Descartes’s part” (S 42). In addition to the fact that the second interpretation proposed is not corroborated by any element in Descartes, these two analyses tend to circumvent the interest of this remark of Elisabeth. It is important in itself that the interlocutor of Descartes makes supposed weaknesses of her sex an element for the understanding of her psychophysical state.
- 3.
This is the first difficulty submitted to Descartes by Elisabeth: “how the soul of a human being (it being only a thinking substance) can determine the bodily spirits, in order to bring about voluntary actions” (To Descartes, 16 May 1643, AT III, 661; S 62). The precision of the formulation of this difficulty and the insistence with which Elisabeth returns to it make her, according to L. Shapiro, “the first person to pose the mind–body problem” (S 23).
- 4.
“You note quite rightly that there are illnesses which, taking away the power of reasoning, also take away that of enjoying the satisfaction of a rational mind. This shows me that what I have said generally about all men should be extended only to those who have free use of their reason” (Descartes to Elisabeth, 1 September 1645, AT IV, 281–282; S 106–107).
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Pellegrin, MF. (2021). The Feminine Body in the Correspondence Between Descartes and Elisabeth. In: Ebbersmeyer, S., Hutton, S. (eds) Elisabeth of Bohemia (1618–1680): A Philosopher in her Historical Context. Women in the History of Philosophy and Sciences, vol 9. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71527-4_11
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