ELISABETH, PRINCESS PALATINE OF BOHEMIA (1618 – 1680), philosopher known for her correspondence with René Descartes. Elisabeth was the daughter of Frederick V, the Elector Palatine of the Rhine in the Holy Roman Empire from 1610 to 1623 and the king of Bohemia (the modern-day Czech Republic) from 1619 to 1620, and Elizabeth Stuart, daughter of James VI and I, king of Scotland and England.
Elisabeth’s early life was shadowed by the catastrophic Thirty Years’ War (1618–48). After her father the king of Bohemia’s Protestant forces were defeated by the army of the Catholic Habsburg monarchy in 1620, the family was driven into exile. Elisabeth went to live in Brandenburg with her grandmother, aunt, and siblings. Eventually the children were reunited with their parents in the Hague, taking refuge at the culturally vibrant court of her father’s uncle, Maurice of Nassau. There they received a thorough education in logic, mathematics, philosophy, and the sciences and also gained proficiency in Latin, Greek, French, and English. Elisabeth received additional lessons in painting, dancing, and music.
Throughout her formative years and beyond, Elisabeth’s intellectual curiosity knew no bounds. She corresponded with various scientists, mathematicians, philosophers, and artists, including Anna Maria van Schurman, Constantijn Huygens, and Andreas Colvius. These letters contain reflections on politics, philosophy, and astronomy, among other subjects. Elisabeth also corresponded frequently with prominent Quakers like Robert Barclay and William Penn, both of whom attempted to convert her, without success.
Elisabeth’s correspondence with René Descartes would leave an indelible mark on her life and define her philosophical legacy. She first wrote to Descartes in 1643, probing the intricacies of his philosophical system, and soon their letters to each other were grappling with profound questions of metaphysics, ethics, and political philosophy. In particular Elisabeth rejected Descartes’ dualistic framework regarding the interaction of mind and body, according to which an immaterial substance (mind) somehow acts on a material one (body). Indeed, Descartes even theorized that the mind can exist entirely outside the body. Elisabeth, by contrast, held that a causal metaphysical connection requires an underlying physical relationship, pointing out instances in which bodily conditions do affect mental capacities.
Though Descartes’ letters to Elisabeth were published after his death in 1650, Elisabeth declined to have her letters to Descartes published during her lifetime. In fact, none of her writings were published until 1879, when her side of the correspondence was finally published in a volume by Alexandre Foucher de Careil. De Careil obtained the letters from the antiquarian bookseller Frederick Müller, who had discovered a packet of Elisabeth’s letters in the municipality of Arnheim.
In addition to its wealth of philosophical reflections, Elisabeth’s correspondence reveals her involvement in political negotiations, including the Treaty of Westphalia, which effectively ended the Thirty Years’ War. She also participated in talks following the imprisonment of her brother Rupert for his involvement in the English Civil War, helped arrange the terms of her sister Henrietta’s marriage, and assisted in managing her family’s finances after the war ended.
Elisabeth received several marriage proposals throughout her life but declined all of them. In later years she focused more fully on spiritual and religious pursuits, joining the Lutheran convent in the town of Herford in 1660 and becoming abbess of the convent in 1667, though herself a Calvinist. In addition to her duties as abbess, Elisabeth governed the region’s population of seven thousand. Known for her kind and caring nature in addition to her shrewd intelligence, Elisabeth invited persecuted Protestant groups to take shelter in her land and even welcomed members of more marginalized sects like the Labadists and the Quakers, including her friends Barclay and Penn.
Though it was clear Descartes recognized Elisabeth as an important philosophical interlocutor—he dedicated two of his major works to her, the seminal Principles of Philosophy (1644) as well as his final treatise, Passions of the Soul (1649)—the details of her thought were for centuries left uninterrogated by historians and philosophers, part of the general erasure of women from the philosophical canon that has only recently begun to be rectified. Feminist scholars have claimed to detect in her thinking a form of proto-feminism informed by her lived and practical experience, while others believe Elisabeth’s true concern was less mind-body metaphysics than the central question of how to govern well. Recent philosophical debates have centered on the question of whether Elisabeth should be considered a Cartesian at all. Regardless, as scholars continue to reevaluate the contributions of women philosophers, Elisabeth has rightfully claimed pride of place among the intellectual luminaries of her time.