475. Ariane Schneck on Elisabeth and Descartes

Posted on 7 September 2025

We finish our look at Elisabeth of Bohemia and Descartes by talking to Ariane Schneck about their correspondence, focusing on the mind-body problem and the passions.

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Emotion and sentiment

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Mirza Beglerov… on 2 November 2025

"[...]Maybe she was a little…

"[...]Maybe she was a little bit depressed[...]" And modern day feminism would whack her in the head even more!

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Note: this transcription was produced by automatic voice recognition software. It has been corrected by hand, but may still contain errors. We are very grateful to Tim Wittenborg for his production of the automated transcripts and for the efforts of a team of volunteer listeners who corrected the texts.

PA: Thanks so much for coming on the podcast to talk about these two exciting figures. Let's start by reminding the listener what we've already been discussing in the last couple of episodes, which is that there's this correspondence between Elizabeth of Bohemia and Descartes. How did they get into this exchange of ideas and how would you characterize the letters that we have that survived? What's the tone? How much is there? And so on.

AS: Hi, thanks for having me here. I'm very excited to talk about Descartes and especially Elizabeth of Bohemia. And how they got into the exchange was that Elizabeth was very well educated. She was very much interested in philosophy, in mathematics, but also in other sciences. And because of this interest, she read the meditations already early. They were published in 1641. And already in 1643, she initiated the exchange by writing Descartes a letter and asking questions about what is now considered his main work, the Meditations on First Philosophy. And the most famous part of this exchange is probably what is nowadays called the mind-body interaction problem. So in her first letter, she asked Descartes a question about that or several questions about that. But then they quickly came from discussing that problem to also discussing mathematical For example, Descartes sent her a geometrical problem for which he had found an algebraic solution, the so-called a problem of the three circles or Apollonius problem. And at the beginning, he sent a letter to a friend saying he might have given her too a hard problem because he was one of the most famous mathematicians in his time. And he himself made a solution attempt for that. But then she sent back her solution and he was very much surprised how good it was. He even said it was in some regards more elegant than his own. But they did not only discuss philosophy and math, but also all other kinds of scientific topics. They discussed Elizabeth's mental and physical health problems from her so-called melancholia to her low-grade fever, family struggles, political affairs in the context of the Thirty Years War in which her family was involved. For example, in regard to moral philosophy, they discussed Seneca and political philosophy. They discussed Machiavelli. And all in all, we have almost 60 letters that the two exchanged, which in the latest English translations are about 120 pages of text. And you also asked me about the tone. So the tone between them is very friendly. Elizabeth always signs her letters with “your most affectionate friend” or your “very affectionate friend.” And he signs them with “your more humble and obedient servant.” But the way they exchange, the way they write the letters sounds as if they were actually
really good friends. Like they saw each other during the time when they had the letters exchanged. They also a couple of times met and they hugged because they were both in the Netherlands at the time. And she even said that sometimes not only reading his letters or following his philosophical But just seeing him in person would help her. She said, your presence was what brought the cure to me, like when she was not feeling well. And what is also interesting is that she sometimes would frame her questions or her critical remarks in a tone that was maybe influenced by politeness standards of the time or maybe also gender stereotypes. So she sometimes says, “oh, but I don't understand that, Descartes. Can you explain it a little bit better to me or explain it so that I can understand it?” And some people have interpreted that as maybe she had internalized some kind of sexism or something. But I think that she was in fact very self-confident and she knew that her critical remarks were really substantive. And that I think one can see that from the fact that she was very persistent in her remarks. So she did not let Descartes escape that easily. And she repeated her criticisms if he tried to not really answer them. What's also interesting about the whole collection of letters is that they were not intended for the public. So in that time, in the 17th century, a lot of letters served a function that is now served in philosophy by journal articles. But this conversation was really intended to be just private, just between the two of them. Descartes and other people often ask her that also her part of the correspondence could be published or shared. And she refused that. So she didn't want that. They even at some point considered writing in code. So it was really not meant for a broader audience. But now, of course, they are published and we all have access to these letters. And I think this is very good and also very important because this is the only philosophical work that we have from her. She didn't write any other books or long treatises. What we know about her philosophical thinking mainly comes from the letters that Descartes wrote.

PA: I think that's really interesting what you were saying about her apparent protestations of ignorance. Like, “oh, I didn't get that.” Can you explain that to me? Because actually, the power dynamic between the two of them is very interesting. You mentioned gender.

AS: Right. So she's a woman, he's a man, but also she's a princess. He's nothing like that. He's older than her as well. So I found reading the letters, it was quite hard to tell who was in charge, who's the superior person in a sense. But he finds it, as you said, your humble and obedient servant. So that's just that she's in charge. But he's this esteemed philosopher. That suggests that he's in charge. I think it's quite a complicated thing to tease out.

PA: That's very interesting because there are different hierarchies between them. She's royal family, he's lower nobility. So she's in that sense, very much in a position of power compared to him. But on the other hand, as you said, she's much younger.

AS: So she's 24 when she initiated the exchange, he's 47. And he's already a very well-known established philosopher, mathematician. But on the other hand, she's also, even though she was that young, she was known to be very smart and very well-educated, very learned. So the fact that he, for example, sent her that mathematical problem to test her, he did that because he knew she was known or famous already for her mathematical skills. And they were really pretty advanced. Using algebraic methods for solving geometrical problems was very new at that time. And she has taught herself that method, the latest algebraic methods, with a textbook. People knew that she was very good in doing that. So that was what made him sent her the problem. So on the one hand, I would say, he was more famous in the sense of being a famous philosopher, being a famous mathematician, but she was also already famous for her skills in philosophy and math. Whereas Descartes went to a Jesuit college, she had to teach a lot of this stuff to herself. She had a very profound education. Her mother saw it as very important for her that all her children had a very good education for the time. Boys and girls, they were all taught together. All the siblings were taught together in philosophy, math, all kinds of languages. So I don't know if you've talked about that in one of the previous episodes, but for example, we know that she spoke at least five languages and one of them was Greek and she spoke it so fluently that her siblings called her La Grecque. So she was very well educated due to the good education that she received as a child and teenager. But then of course, a lot of it was also self-taught. Like when she used that textbook, that algebra textbook to teach herself the lay's algebraic methods. Which is very impressive.

PA: So let's move on to what you mentioned as the most famous philosophical issue, which is this thing about the interaction problem. This is something we've already been talking about in other episodes. We've got the mind and the body, they're two kinds of substances. The mind's only attribute is thinking, the body's attribute is extension, and she wants to know how they interact. So that's the problem. And what I was wondering about is, how does she understand the problem? And in particular, where does she think the threat is? So what I mean by that is if Descartes can't solve the interaction problem, does she think that that means that he has to become a materialist? Or does it mean that she thinks he has to become an Aristotelian? Or what does she think would result if he can't explain how the mind affects the body and vice versa?

AS: I agree that it's definitely the most famous problem from the correspondence. I think she's especially interested in one side of the interaction problem because it has two sides, mind to body interaction and body to mind interaction. And she's especially interested in how the mind or soul as an immaterial, merely thinking thing can move the body as a merely material, extended thing. So she's especially interested in how this immaterial mind can cause voluntary actions in the physical material, extended body. And she formulates it in that way. And then she also demonstrates a lot of familiarity with different accounts of causation. Descartes and Elizabeth both share a mechanistic worldview. And in this efficient causation is especially important. And she gives him several options how, in this mechanistic efficient causation framework, something can move something else. And she thinks nothing of that works with an immaterial mind. But then already in her first letter, she opens up the possibility that there could be some properties of the soul or mind aside from thinking, aside from thought, that could explain how interaction is possible. And she also brings that up later again in the correspondence. Maybe we can talk more about that. But in regard to your question about materialism vs a more Aristotelian framework, I think they talk about a more Aristotelian understanding. Descartes, in response to her criticism, one of the options or one of the ideas he explores or tries out with her is to say that normally in the physical world, we think that one body moves another body by physical contact. This is obviously not possible in the mind-body case, because the mind is not a physical, extended material object. But he says we have this old idea how the scholastic philosophers thought of causation, which is the idea of heaviness. Heaviness is a quality, so it's not a physical thing, but it can exert influence on bodies and make them move towards the center of the earth without physical contact. And he says, this is how you should imagine that the soul acts on the body. So the soul itself not being a physical object, thus without physical contact. And here Elizabeth completely dismisses that option. So that would be a more Aristotelian picture that Descartes also himself brings into the conversation, but she completely dismisses that. She says, you already proved in your physics that this is completely wrong, so why should it now help us to understand mind-body interaction? So I think she definitely doesn't want him to go in that direction. And then another idea that he would not agree on, but what she finds more plausible, is to grant the soul some materiality or some either matter or extension. And I think here it's more like her own view. She says, I find it more plausible to grant the soul or the thinking thing or the mind matter or extension than to imagine that something immaterial moves something material. But I think that's more her position and not a position that Descartes would be able to accept. So when you mentioned that maybe mind has some other attribute other than thinking that's what it would be.

PA: So it would be thinking as a substance, but it would also be extended. Is that right?

AS: Exactly. It's a bit difficult because in the first letter, what she says is: can you give me a more precise definition of the soul, like the substance of the soul aside from its main attribute, thinking? Even though she knows that in Descartes’ framework, you cannot really conceive of a pure substance without its main attributes. But she says, just for theoretical reasons, let's assume we could separate the substance from its attribute. Could there not be something in the substance that is not thinking that can help us with the interaction problem? And how exactly to spell that out is a very difficult question. There have been researchers like Elisa Shapiro, for example. She thinks that Elizabeth is not like a full-blown reductive materialist, but that she has room for kind of autonomy of the thought or autonomy of thinking. But she thinks that autonomy depends on the body in some sense. So it's not full materialism or reductive materialism. And then other people, for example, Deborah Tollefson, have argued that she has indeed a conception like that of Henry More: the soul’s being immaterial, but nevertheless extended. And what does that mean? One could think it's actually like a ghost. So it's penetrable, but extended. And Tollefson thinks it goes a little bit in that direction because she talks about how the soul could be extended. And then you had at least one option of imagining how interaction would be possible, but not material. So these are two options in that direction.

PA: Obviously, these are options that Descartes would certainly not want to accept. Does he say anything back to Elizabeth beyond what he's already said in the Meditations, for example, that would actually help solve the problem?

AS: He says a lot of things back. Whether they actually help to solve the problem, I'm not so sure. I think most people are not convinced that he solved the problem. But how he tries to answer a criticism is first by this scholastic notion of heaviness. She dismisses that. And rightly, she says he doesn't believe in heaviness. Not in scholastic qualities or real qualities. And then another way that he tries to answer that I haven't mentioned is that he writes of so-called primitive notions. He says we have primitive concepts, for example, of the soul as a merely thinking thing, of the body as a merely extended thing. But then he introduces a third primitive notion that is the one of the union between mind and body. And he says that sensation shows us that there is this union, that interaction is possible and there is this union between mind and body. And this had led commentators to think about whether he actually had not two substances, that he was a substance dualist, but maybe a substance trialist with a third substance, which is the union between mind and body. And he emphasizes sensation in that context. This is interesting because people have written a lot about how sensation can help us with understanding-and-body union. And depending on that understanding, mind-body interaction. But then Elizabeth says, and this is very well argued from her: “Descartes, I also know that there is interaction. I can feel it. I have sensation that show, but I want to understand how it's possible. And this notion of a third primitive substance doesn't really help with that.”

PA: Yeah, it's just a kind of name for the phenomenon.

AS: Exactly. Not an explanation of the phenomenon.

PA: Another phenomenon, other than sensation, that seems to bind the soul to the body would be the passions, which of course Descartes wrote about at her behest.

AS: Right.

PA: But it also comes a lot up a lot in the letters, as you mentioned already, she suffers from melancholy, she suffers from fever, she's upset about all these horrible things that have happened to her family. And it seems that there's a connection between the mind body interaction problem and this concept of the passions. Is that right?

AS: There's definitely a connection because passionate experience, experiencing passions presupposes that there is mind body union and mind body interaction. Because passion for Descartes is something that is caused by the body to some extent, but felt in the soul. So the whole passionate experience also already presupposes mind-body interaction. And I have the feeling in the part of the correspondence, so the so-called later part, where they mainly discuss the passions and emotions and the possibilities that we have to control our emotions. There they are already assuming that mind-body interaction works. So they don't go into these problems anymore. The conversation about the problem of mind body interaction stops when Elizabeth says, “okay, Descartes, I know that I feel that mind and body can interact, but I don't know how.” And then they never really take that up again. But then when they discuss the passions, they seem to assume: we don't really know how it works, but we know that it works. Now let's talk about more in more detail about the phenomenon of experiencing emotions. What are they? How many are there of them? And how can we rationally control them or not? As if they've solved the problem and agreed to pretend the problem has been solved. Maybe they solved it walking around the garden instead of in letter form. And we just don't know what the solution is. We know that we don't have all the letters and we have the last letter on the interaction problem… and then they start to talk about mathematical problems. So maybe there is somewhere a letter where Descartes solved it.

PA: Yeah, frustrating. If they find the letter, I'm going to have to have you back on the podcast. But for now, let me ask you something else about Elizabeth's take on this issue. What is her view of the passions or does she have a view on the passions? You said when it came to the soul and the interaction problem, that we can tease out a possible position that she seems to at least be considering. Does that happen with the passions as well, do you think?

AS: Yes, I think with the passions even more so because we don't have so many letters on the interaction problem, but we have a lot of letters where they talk about the passions. And there the whole story, how Descartes got into that topic kind of is because, you know, she was suffering from melancholy. Nowadays we would maybe say she was a little bit depressed because of a lot of sad things happening to her and family members. And Descartes was supposed to cure her. So they got into this discussion of how to preserve one's happiness if a lot of unfortunate things happen to you. And in this discussion, Elizabeth was like, okay, I need to understand the passions better. And then they got into the exchange. And she also pressured him to write what is now known as the Passions of the Soul, the last work Descartes published. And he drafted a first version of that, sent it to her and she commented on it. In the correspondence, they discuss that what they call the little treatise on the passions, which was the draft version of the later Passions of the Soul. Especially when you compare the correspondence with then Descartes' published version, I think you can see that she had her own philosophical position from which she argued and then also how she influenced Descartes. The main question was how can we stay happy even though a lot of sad things are happening to us. The historical background is important. There was the Thirty Years War, and a lot of Elizabeth’s family was very much involved there, while Descartes also had to move around a lot. They both lived in exile. It was a hard time. So both of them were interested in this question: how can we stay happy? And Descartes proposed a Neo-Stoic solution. He was not an absolute Neo-Stoic, but he has certainly Neo-Stoic elements in his thinking on the passions and the possibility of controlling, rationally controlling one's passions. And his idea was: first you have to really think about what you're doing, what would be the best thing to do. Then you have to resolutely do whatever your reason tells you is the most rational thing to do. And then there are a lot of things that will of course still not go well, but you should always just tell yourself that this was not in your hands. Either you think you cannot have these goods that you want, or you tried your best, things didn't work out well, but you did all you could. So there's no reason to be sad or to feel emotions like regret or remorse. He thinks these are the main enemies to happiness, and also desire for things that you cannot get. But Elizabeth very strongly argues against this Neo-Stoic cognitive therapy. And I think she does so from her own philosophical point of view. I personally think it's one that is inspired more by the Aristotelian tradition, as Descartes is by a more Neo-Stoic line.

PA: That would be Aristotelian because she thinks that the virtuous person would feel appropriate regret under certain circumstances. Is that the idea? Or even maybe anger or something like that?

AS: Yeah, she definitely thinks that emotions serve a lot of positive functions. First, she also thinks that the kind of emotional control or rational control over our emotion, that Descartes thinks is possible, that this is just not possible. She thinks that it's just not feasible to, for example, not desire certain external goods, even if you cannot have them. So she says often, I know I cannot be healthy or I cannot do anything to have the financial means to live, but I still want them. So just acknowledging that I cannot do anything to get them doesn't make me stop wanting them. And she thinks, for example, that with family members or good friends, you are emotionally involved with them, you're emotionally entangled with them and you cannot stop caring for them, even though you know there's nothing you can do. So she thinks that a lot of what Descartes says, that we can just stop our emotional entanglement or our emotional investment, that it's just not possible to do that. Also, for example, with regret, Descartes and the correspondence very much criticizes, he thinks regret is especially bad for our happiness when we regret things. So this is one of the emotions that we should control. And she thinks—and here argues from the perspective of someone who was educated also to have political responsibility, maybe reigning a kingdom or something one day, something like that—when you make decisions and they affect a lot of other people, even though you tried your best, the external circumstances put time pressure on you and then it turns out it was a bad decision. Of course you regret it, even though you did your best. So these are all arguments with which she questions the feasibility of Descartes' recommendations. Then she also thinks it's not even desirable. Even if we could exercise rational control to the extent that Descartes thinks we can, she thinks it's not desirable. And I think both of the feasibility and the desirability show more broadly Aristotelian thinking. On the desirability, that's what I mentioned at the beginning: she points out all these positive functions of the emotions. She thinks that when we are emotionally involved, we act with more care or concern for what we're doing because we suffer from the consequences. Again, especially negative emotions are important. When I know that I will be very sad if I don't act, then I really try my best to do the best I can. And she also thinks that the passions give our actions more force, more drive, so to say. And she also thinks that especially, again, negative emotions like regret have something a corrective function. So if we don't regret things, we don't really try to do better next time. And these are all arguments that one can find in 17th century treatises where the history of philosophy or historical takes on the passion are summarized. And there, what she says very much resembles how the peripatetics are characterized in that time.

PA: That's really interesting. I hadn't thought about that, that she was coming back against Descartes with a more scholastic or Aristotelian perspective. That's really surprising, but also fascinating.

AS: And it's very interesting that there's this thinker that she corresponded with, we don't know, most probably they corresponded, we know certainly they were in touch. It's an English clergyman called Edward Reynolds, and he dedicated also a treatise on the passions to her, but much before she even started her correspondence with Descartes. So in 1640, Edward Reynolds wrote in his dedicatory letter for his treatise on the passions that he dedicates it to Elizabeth because she has read and approved of his book on the passions. And if you look at that book from 1640, you can see that he summarizes all these historical positions and he summarizes what the Stoics thought, what the Peripatetics thought, and his characterizations of the Peripatetic position very much resembles what she answers to Descartes.

PA: On the Descartes side, do you think that he actually has been influenced by her to make significant changes or improvements to his previous positions?

AS: I think yes, but it depends on which previous positions. In comparison to what he wrote in the Meditations, there are people (for example, Lisa Shapiro) who think that he might have weakened his mind-body dualism in The Passions of the Soul: that he might not have been such a strict mind-body dualist anymore as he was in the Meditations. And that could be due to the influence of Elizabeth. Lisa Shapiro argues for that by saying what I also said, that at some point in the correspondence, they don't talk about the interaction problem anymore. They just assume it's possible. So Lisa thinks that's maybe a sign that he has at least weakened his dualism and just thought: they interact, but we don't really know why and how. Maybe, he's not a strict dualist anymore. But what I find particularly interesting is not the comparison between the Meditations and the Passions of the Soul, but a comparison between the correspondence and the Passions of the Soul. As I already mentioned, they discuss the draft version of the Passions of the Soul, and there are a lot of concepts where Elizabeth criticizes him. Then in the correspondence, he says, you're right; your critical point is taken. Then when you look at the Passions of the Soul, he actually takes over her position. So he abandons his first attempt that he had stated in the little treatise on the passions and takes over her position.

PA: Before we stop, I just wanted to ask one broader question, which is about her place, not so much in early modern philosophy as a whole, since that's probably too big a question, but her place in the story of women in early modern philosophy. As we're going to be seeing in episodes to come, there will be a lot of figures who are doing philosophy, also talking to male philosophers, like Leibniz, for example. So there are a lot of these cases of correspondence between women and men. But she is the first woman philosopher we've covered from the 17th century. So where would you fit her into that story? Do you see her as a kind of pioneering figure, or do you see her as just part of a broader trend?

AS: That's a good question, because I think the 17th and 18th century is very diverse in regard to the women thinkers and women philosophers who lived and worked in that time. And I think she is a pioneer in the sense that, in the time she worked and was active, there was no salon culture already established. So she was earlier than this more well-known salon culture phenomenon. She was also not an early feminist or anything like that. So some women philosophers I'm interested in the 17th, especially 18th century, were very invested in proto-feminism, feminist topics. We see almost nothing of that in Elizabeth's letters. But I think she was still a pioneer in the sense that she was a women intellectual. So she was extremely well-educated. She was extremely knowledgeable in philosophy and mathematics, natural philosophy, in medicine and astronomy. Like we were already starting, we're just starting to see in how many areas she was active and knowledgeable. Especially the area of natural philosophy or physics. She was into microscopy. She was into astronomy. And I think there is a sense in which she paved the way for other later women natural philosophers like Cavendish or Du Châtelet. Because she was famous in her time for that. There was a time when people in the 20th century rediscovered Elizabeth’s thinking, where she was mainly pictured as Descartes’ muse or his pen-pal. But in her time, she was very famous as a woman intellectual, a very smart, highly educated woman. And so people must have known of her and that could have inspired to one or the other female philosopher to follow in her steps. It was a general phenomenon that a lot of these women who were quite well-known and respected in their time were then written out of the historiography of philosophy. Either completely written out or when they were still mentioned then in a way that their influence, for example, was completely underestimated. So I think Elizabeth really influenced Descartes and she had her own philosophical positions from which she argued. And there was a time her positions were also reduced to her being a woman. So some literature from the 1990s always interprets her critical remarks from the point that she was a woman: when she emphasized the positive function of the emotions, that was seen as the female point of view or the woman's point of view. And I tried to show that it was more the neo-Aristotelian or neo-Peripatetic position, not at a woman's point of view. She's just a philosopher who has her own position to advance.