The Princess and Descartes
The story of the Princess That Took on Rene Descartes
There is a lot that has been said about the influence Rene Descartes has had on modern science. Whether it is the field of physics, biology, astronomy, mathematics, philosophy or psychology, there are very few scientific disciplines where Descartes did not dip his figurative feet.
As I have discussed previously, Descartes proposed that the mind and the body are separate entities. He believed that the body is a material thing (i.e. it is made of physical matter) and the soul/the mind was an immaterial object which lived on after we died. Why did he propose that? You can read it in detail here but *spoiler alert* it was mostly due to his religious beliefs.
But there was a problem. Many people did not buy his idea. One of these critics was a princess from Bohemia named Elisabeth, Elisabeth Simmern van Pallandt.
Bohemian Rhapsody
Elisabeth had spent the formative years of her life in exile after her father, the King of Bohemia was ousted from his throne. During this exile, she started familiarizing herself with the work of a philosopher from France who was shaking the very foundations of Aristotlean norms at the time. When Descartes heard that a princess had taken notice of his, he understandably wished to meet her.
And thus began this special relationship which is believed to have had a huge influence on the thinking process of Descartes and his future work. In 1643, Princess Elizabeth wrote in a very straightforward letter about the doubts she had about Descartes’ idea of dualism.
These were her exact words,
I ask you please to tell me 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.
In his work on physics, Descartes had claimed that any body, if it has to be in motion, must be touched by an external object. (Similar to Newton’s first law of motion) Think of it this way, Descartes said that if a body has to be pushed by another, it has to have contact with it. Princess Elizabeth raised the question that if the mind does not have a material presence but the body does, how then can the mind affect the movement of the body?
The question had been raised many times before but Descartes usually pushed those doubts aside, but when the princess talked, Descartes listened. He appreciated the logic and sincerity Elisabeth offered in her letters. She saw herself as a student of Descartes but wasn’t shy about questioning and critiquing him. Descartes could not come up with a reasonable answer. He conceded. Something that usually happened once in a blue moon.
I beg Your Highness to feel free to attribute…matter and…extension to the soul, for to do so is to do nothing but conceive it as united to the body.
But Elisabeth was not done. She raised another question. This time she questioned Descartes’ idea that the soul was immortal. Why did he think that? Again, read the article but if you feel lazy, it was for religious reasons. Descartes said that the soul lives on even after the material body has died i.e. the soul is not directly affected by the existence or non-existence of the body.
Elisabeth didn’t buy it.
She said that when she gets physically sick, it usually affects her mental wellness as well. A sick person is rarely happy so the state of the body does have an effect on the mind. But if the soul/mind is truly independent of the state of the body, why can it not be independent before our death?
Descartes struggled to come up with an answer except for retreating to the religious explanations. The princess wasn’t sure about it.
A Special Relationship
The relationship that Descartes and Elisabeth shared was something that went beyond simple academic communication or a traditional student-teacher relationship. Despite the hard questions Elisabeth proposed, Descartes always treated her queries with respect and appreciation.
They had communication on topics of morality, philosophy, mathematics and geometry. Just 2 months before Descartes’ death, Elisabeth had written to him hoping to see him again in the summer for more discussions. Sadly, the summer came, but Descartes did not. He had caught a cold and died of pneumonia in Switzerland. The last paper he wrote a year before his death was written for Elisabeth.
The Legacy of Elisabeth
Elisabeth lost out on an important relationship when Descartes died but that was not the end of her story as a philosopher. She had been in constant communication with other prominent thinkers of the time and is considered by many feminist scholars as the model of a protofeminist.
The feminist argument is that just because she did not publish a treatise, it does not mean that she did not possess philosophical acumen and intelligence. The fact of the matter is that she was more than just a princess who wrote to a great man, she was a truly great woman, ruler and philosopher in her own right, but one that had been forgotten in history.
Princess Elisabeth died in 1680.
The End.
Further Readings
https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/states-mind/ghost-and-princess
Tollefsen, D. (1999). Princess Elisabeth and the Problem of Mind-Body Interaction. Hypatia 14(3), 59-77. https://www.muse.jhu.edu/article/14076.
Shapiro, Lisa, "Elisabeth, Princess of Bohemia", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2021 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2021/entries/elisabeth-bohemia/>.
Wonderful story with an insight :))