Abstract
In this work I intend to explore the textual and conceptual roots of the moral view in the Early Modern Rationalism of Cartesian spectrum as detected by Elisabeth of Bohemia. To this intent, I will drive my analysis, first, to the remark Descartes adds to his own provisional morality of the Discourse in the Letter of August 4th, 1645 to Elisabeth. Second, I will approach the two aspects of her reply to Descartes, both in her Letter of September 13th 1645, which I call (a) the contextual aspect—with which she excludes the hypotheses of an infinite science at the service of assessing the good and (b) the self-related aspect, with which the philosopher of Bohemia address the moral objectiveness as an intrinsic practical value, obtained by the passions that may lead to reasonable actions. The upshot is a practical and affective moral view, in which the normative trait of some passions of the soul can be taken as the explanation of an intentional infrastructure of the mind, without, however, a theory of ideas as such playing an explicit role. Instead of a representational endeavor, Elisabeth of Bohemia claims a kind of self-awareness from the discovery of a passionate function as an expression of the adequate measure between happiness and morality of actions. That kind of awareness, I shall demonstrate, is what objectiveness consists in.
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Notes
- 1.
Antonia Lolordo (“Descartes’s Philosophy of Mind and its Early Critics” (2019) In: Philosophy of Mind in the Early Modern Ages. Rebecca Copenhaver (Ed.) vol. 4, Routledge, pp. 69–90) called the Correspondence with Elisabeth as such and I think she is right, so I’m following it.
- 2.
It is true that some Letters of this Correspondence are lost. The interpretation now suggested, however, seems consistent with de dialogical dynamic at play.
- 3.
Lisa Shapiro’s translation. I’m using the Translated and Edited Correspondence Between Elisabeth and Descartes made by professor Shapiro.
- 4.
I’m choosing to mention a “use” because Nadler, as I read this work of him, establishes a dialogue with the Humean approach of personal identity by Cartesian philosophers in the Treatise (I, 4, Sect. 6): “The mind is a kind of theatre, where several perceptions successively make their appearance; pass, re-pass, glide away, and mingle in an infinite variety of postures and situations. There is properly no simplicity in it at one time, nor identity in different; whatever natural propension we may have to imagine that simplicity and identity. The comparison of the theatre must not mislead us. They are the successive perceptions only, that constitute the mind; nor have we the most distant notion of the place, where these scenes are represented, or of the materials, of which it is composed. /What then gives us so great a propension to ascribe an identity to these successive perceptions, and to suppose ourselves possest of an invariable and uninterrupted existence through the whole course of our lives? In order to answer this question, we must distinguish betwixt personal identity, as it regards our thought or imagination, and as it regards our passions or the concern we take in ourselves. The first is our present subject; and to explain it perfectly we must take the matter pretty deep, and account for that identity, which we attribute to plants and animals; there being a great analogy betwixt it, and the identity of a self or person”. So, as for Hume there could be two entities to what minds referees to, to Descartes and other Cartesians (such as those analysed in Nadler’s paper), the reference would be one, with two orders within it. I thank to Plinio Junqueira Smith for the reminder of Hume’s reference, implicit in the use of the expression “theater of the mind” by Nadler, as I read it, in a somewhat indirect and perhaps ironic way of replying to the Humean attack as a Cartesian—or Spinozist—could do.
- 5.
I’m following the lines of Christian Barth, in his study “Descartes on Intentionality, Conscientia and Phenomenal Consciousness”. Studia philosophica, 75/2016, pp. 18–19.
- 6.
This aspect is clearly expressed, as I read it, in The Third Meditation, from ATVII, 37, specially, and also in the discussion on the material falsity of ideas between Descartes and Arnauld, on the Fourth Set of Objections and Replies. Albeit in a different perspective (perhaps a more realistic Cartesianism), with respect to the nature of the representational trait of the Rationalism, Kurt Smith recognizes this operational and not necessarily representational (or actually so) in the Fourth Replies, as we may read in this passage: “In taking the idea formally, the sense that requires us to look for the cause of the idea’s objective reality, Arnauld is led to the conclusion that there can be no idea that represents cold as a positive and real quality. This is so because in lacking formal reality, cold cannot be the cause of the idea’s objective reality. As Descartes appears to be contending, had Arnauld taken the idea materially, he would have taken the representational feature of the idea (the quality cold) in light of the idea’s being a medium or operation of representation, namely, as that mental operation by way of which some mode of the ice cube was being represented. Taken materially, he would not have taken it to be something that exists outside of thought, that is, as a thing requiring some level of formal reality. This seems to be the point of Descartes’ defense in the Fourth Replies” (2005, p. 219), Rationalism and Representation, in: A Companion to Rationalism, Alan Nelson (ed.), Blackwell, pp. 206–223 – emphasis mine.
- 7.
The problem of objectivity or objectiveness, depending upon the explanatory view in play, may be found in the Preface of the Fourth Part of Ethics, when Spinoza’s states: “As far as good and evil are concerned, they also indicate nothing positive in things, considered in themselves, nor are they anything [10] other than modes of thinking, or notions we form because we compare things to one another. For one and the same thing can, at the same time, be good, and bad, and also indifferent. For example, Music is good for one who is Melancholy, bad for one who is mourning, and neither good nor bad to one who is deaf. [15] But though this is so, still we must retain these words. For because we desire to form an idea of man, as a model of human nature which we may look to, it will be useful to us to retain these same words with the meaning I have indicated. In what follows, therefore, I shall understand by good what we know certainly is a means by which we [20] may approach nearer and nearer to the model of human nature that we set before ourselves. By evil, what we certainly know prevents us from becoming like that model. Next, we shall say that men are more perfect or imperfect, insofar as they approach more or[…]”, in: The collected works of Spinoza. Includes bibliographies and index. 1. Philosophy—Collected works. I. Curley, E. M. (Edwin M.), 1937.
- 8.
I shall thanks to Professor Lisa Shapiro for her recomendations to be cautious while using this vocabulary in a somewhat fast way. I don’t intend to examine the concept of conscience itself, nor the Cartesian approach of it, along the lines of Barth’s paper refereed above. I don’t aim to put Elisabeth’s thought under a phenomenological lens. Being aware of the conceptual distinction between conscientia and consciousness do not preclude, nevertheless, the use of this inner order in play, in which the conscientia, as a moral dimension of the mind, seems to, for Elisabeth, support and give the criteria for action in the economy of passions and actions.
- 9.
Eros Carvalho called my attention to how the kind of knowledge and perspective I recognize in Elisabeth may be approached by the distinction between know-how and know-that, made for the first time, as such, by Gilbert Ryle, in 1949 (especially in The Concept of Mind and also Jason Stanley in his Know-How—2011), which gave rise to a vast literature on the theory of action, especially in the tradition of analytical philosophy. It is possible that this more epistemic aspect, if I may say so, of the approach of the nature of practical knowledge that I recognize in Elisabeth, deserves specific attention under this analytical tool. On the one hand, it is not clear that a return to Aristotle gives “the last word” on the subject in a satisfactory way, given the unavoidably epistemic trait of Early Modern Rationalism (to not mention the subjectivity perspective of any philosophical inquiry in the Cartesian tradition). On the other hand, it is possible that, in the PIRP, a distinction between know-how and know-that affords us more promising extensional elements for analysis. In any case, this is a possible path of investigation, still open, I mean: not yet covered, as such, here.
References
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Acknowledgements
This work is part of a wider research project, which is also the first project on a woman philosopher at post-doctoral level to be officially supported by a Brazilian funding agency. The project examines Elisabeth of Bohemia’s views on intentionality and responsibility in the context of Cartesianism and was awarded funds by the Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq – 2018 Universal Call for Applications). One of the stages of the above project was the First International Conference on Women in Modern Philosophy that took place at the State University of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ). The work on Elizabeth of Bohemia presented in this Volume was developed under the supervision of Professor Edgar da Rocha Marques at UERJ. An initial version was presented during the conference in Rio and discussed with colleagues who made many helpful suggestions. I would like to thank especially Pedro Pricladnitzky, Eros Moreira de Carvalho, Plinio Junqueira Smith, and Lisa Shapiro, for their judicious and critical reading, contributions, corrections, and supportive dialogue. None of them is responsible for the views expressed in the above work or any remaining errors.
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Peixoto, K.R. (2022). Context and Self-Related Reflection: Elisabeth of Bohemia’s Way to Address the Moral Objectiveness. In: Lopes, C., Ribeiro Peixoto, K., Pricladnitzky, P. (eds) Latin American Perspectives on Women Philosophers in Modern History. Women in the History of Philosophy and Sciences, vol 13. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-00288-5_4
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