How one princess' experience with chronic illness made Descartes question his unjustifiably optimistic belief in the power of reason, and with it, his own mind-body dualism.
"I will suggest that we view the 'great Cartesian anxiety,' although manifestly expressed in epistemological terms, as anxiety over separation—from the organic female universe of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. The Cartesian reconstruction, correspondingly, will be explored as a rebirthing of nature (as machine) and knowledge (as objectivity), a 'masculine birth of time,' as Francis Bacon called it..." —Susan Bordo, The Flight to Objectivity
René Descartes (1596–1650) lived in interesting times. His life spans The Thirty Years' War (Europe's worst religious-political conflict that hardened the Catholic-Protestant split) that gives rise to the modern nation-state, marked by the nation's right to determine its own religious affiliation. He also lived through a major paradigm shift, moving from the Medieval model of an organic cosmos and into the mechanistic model heralded by the scientific revolution. Copernican heliocentrism denied that we are at the center of our universe, and instead has the earth and other planets orbiting around the sun. He published his findings on his way off this mortal coil (possibly the same day he died!), knowing the view went against religious dogma and would be declared heretical. Galileo was tried in 1633 for heresy because of his support for Copernican heliocentrism, and sentenced to house arrest for the rest of his life. Fearing this same fate, Descartes held off publishing his own work Le Monde because he endorsed Copernican heliocentrism in it.
A Frenchman who hated the Aristotelian Scholasticism that dominated academia, Descartes set out to travel and settled in the Dutch Republic, a rare zone for intellectual freedom in his time. He rejected taking things on the authority of "the Philosopher," as Aristotle was known through the medieval period — access to Plato's dialogues was limited for the Latinate West mostly to parts of one of his late dialogues, the Timaeus — with its often occult explanations for physical phenomena, like rocks being ensouled. He saw himself as developing a method for achieving reason and securing certainty for knowledge (i.e., scientific knowledge). For him reason was no longer simply given as part of a soul, divided into the rational, irrational, and appetitive parts. Rationality is, rather, a capacity to be developed by anyone, "even women." His method of radical doubt was meant to demolish the scholastic edifice and question its totalitarian authority. His audience, then, was broader than the few learned academics. Rather than publishing in Latin, thereby limiting his audience to those privileged to a classical education, he published his Discourse on Method (1637) in French so he could reach a wider audience beyond academics:
"Descartes saw his method as opening the way to a new egalitarianism in knowledge. In a letter written shortly after the publication of the Discourse on Method, he commented that his thoughts on method seemed to him appropriate to put in a book where he wished that 'even women' might understand something. From our perspective, this tone may sound..."
He yearned for a wider audience and influence beyond academia. Although his project is clearly epistemological, focused on questions of what we know and how we can know it, he often brushed up against the political throughout his life.
For Descartes, Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia would have represented a great opportunity to reach a greater audience. Although her family was destitute, she was still royalty and therefore connected to a world of influence. She would prove to be a great interlocutor for the philosopher. He wrote how unlike with the objections of others, which led him to repeat himself endlessly, Princess Elisabeth's objections led him to actually rethink his positions — the highest honor paid anyone by a doubter like Descartes.
Unlike so many other women in the history of philosophy whose "real existence" has been the subject of controversy — remember Plato's teacher on love, Diotima, with so much of the writing about her asking whether Plato made her up — here we have a solid, undeniable, written record with the correspondence between Princess Elisabeth and Descartes. No doubt she existed, but because she did not write a treatise or book, some want to question whether she could be considered a philosopher, i.e., a real thinker. (I say this is a boring question.) Lilli Alanen argues in "Descartes and Elisabeth: A Philosophical Dialogue?" that the Descartes–Elisabeth correspondence is a genuine, mutual, Socratic philosophical dialogue rather than a mentor-student exchange, with Elisabeth's persistent questions exposing real gaps in Cartesian dualism. Let's start there.
Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia was born in exile in The Hague, then a part of the Dutch Republic. Her parents, Elisabeth Stuart (daughter of James I of England) and Frederick V, who was king of Bohemia for one turbulent winter (1619–1620), had accepted the crown from the Protestant rebels, intensifying The Thirty Years' War that had kicked off a year earlier. Catholic forces defeated his army and overthrew him, driving him and his family into exile. They settled in The Hague, where Elisabeth was born.
As a part of her education, she found herself studying philosophy at the University of Utrecht, where she encountered Descartes' philosophy with its first professor, a former student of Descartes named Henricus Regius (also referred to as Henry Le Roy). Henry was Descartes' only student, but already their relationship was tense because Descartes believed he didn't get his mind-body dualism and was teaching it wrong. When Princess Elisabeth asked Henry to explain the mind-body union to her, Henry told her to write to Descartes directly. In 1643, a friend of Descartes put them in touch, and the correspondence began. At the time, Descartes was finishing the Principles of Philosophy (which he later dedicated to her). His Meditations on First Philosophy (his most well-known work) was published the year prior in 1641, with a second edition out in 1642 that added a seventh set of objections and replies. Descartes was at the height of his career when he took her on as a mentee.
Princess Elisabeth, it seems, was often unwell — chronically ill, as we would put it today, with a constant slow fever and dry cough. Descartes had no medical degree but he fancied himself a bit of a doctor. He actually advised doctors on anatomical and physiological matters, having performed his own dissections of animal hearts and eyes. He also wrote in great detail about the mechanics of circulation and embryology, but was particularly interested in the eye and how vision works. For him philosophy and science were not separate endeavors, and he believed that the scientific understanding of the (mechanistic) body would lead to cures and eventually prevent aging and extend life significantly. He thought people might live to be centuries old one day, if medicine were put on a rational (i.e., mechanistic, philosophical) footing.
This is how he came to give Princess Elisabeth medical advice, diagnosing her ailments as caused by sadness over her family's misfortunes (not the last time a woman will hear that her physical symptoms are in her head, am I right ladies?). The good news was that the cure was within her own power because the body follows the mind. If she could find contentment in her soul, her body would mend itself. His prescription? A dose of Stoic voluntarism.
Stoicism is a school of philosophy from the Hellenistic period that follows after Aristotle. Three schools dominated in that period: Stoicism, Scepticism, and Epicureanism. The Stoicism of this period divides our world up into our judgements, which are in our control, and everything else. Health, wealth, the opinions of others — none of these are in our purview, and so we shouldn't fret about them. Our freedom is found in what is up to us: our judgements, as well as what we accept. Descartes appends to this classical Stoicism his own mind-body architecture: thoughts and bodily movements are linked via habits, and a second principle, that reason can govern the passions. Princess Elisabeth should use her thoughts and the power of her will to think away her pain, habituating herself away from any physical discomfort by distracting herself with her thoughts.
But Princess Elisabeth rejects Descartes' unabashed optimism about the power of reason to master the passions (feelings, emotions, flights of imagination, etc.) and completely disarms his mind-body dualism in the process:
"[Princess Elisabeth] makes apparent the tension between the medical-technological approach to the passions and the Stoic voluntarism, which continues throughout the treatise on the Passions. This tension is in a way built into Stoic voluntarism itself, one side of which is the acceptance of the necessity of all things not in our power, another side of which is a firm conviction that our thoughts are absolutely in our power. In combining this faith with his principle of natural institution (according to which nature has joined each of our thoughts with certain bodily movements, but by which, with the help of habit or practice, we also can join them to others), Descartes converts his Stoic voluntarism into an unabashed optimism with regard to our power to master the passions. But the same principle of the natural institution, which is supposed to make reason's control possible, also makes reason dependent on the body and its states. This results in the many inconsistencies and difficulties of his theory" (Alanen, pp. 210–211).
Her disability disabled Descartes' mind-body dualism. Speaking from her own experience, she writes to him that her body's weakness is such that it interferes with her thoughts, and keeps destabilizing her peace of mind. Her illness interferes with her capacity for rational judgement. The passions and reason both are dependent on the body, a body that can be deranged with disease, dethroning reason's assumed sovereignty.
Descartes eventually concedes, admitting that there are circumstances outside of our control that can interfere with our free use of reason — a big admission. Reason can be disabled; its power is not absolute. Continuing with Alanen's reading of their correspondence, Princess Elisabeth is first to expose how little ground for optimism Descartes' mind-body dualism actually gives us:
"From having defended a rather unqualified optimism with regard to the autonomy of reason, Descartes is brought here for the first time to admit that there are circumstances out of our control that can prevent its free use entirely. ... The autonomy he attributes to reason ... is nothing but another prejudice produced by our imagination concealing our ignorance of the real causes at work. The Cartesian theory of the mastery of emotions ... grew out from the answers to Elisabeth's questions. Elisabeth deserves credit for having been the first to see how little ground for optimism with regard to reason's autonomy Descartes's notion of the mind-body union really could offer" (Alanen, pp. 206–207).
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REFERENCES
Alanen, Lilli. "Descartes and Elisabeth: A Philosophical Dialogue?" Feminist Reflections on the History of Philosophy, edited by Lilli Alanen and Charlotte Witt, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2004, pp. 193–218.
Bordo, Susan. "Selections from The Flight to Objectivity." Feminist Interpretations of René Descartes, edited by Susan Bordo, Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999, pp. 48–69.
Lloyd, Genevieve. "Reason as Attainment." Feminist Interpretations of René Descartes, edited by Susan Bordo, Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999, pp. 69–81.
Tuana, Nancy. "Without Good Reason: Defining Reason as Male: Descartes (excerpt)." The Less Noble Sex: Scientific, Religious, and Philosophical Conceptions of Woman's Nature, Indiana University Press, 1993, pp. 60–64.