Lisa Shapiro, ed. Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia and René Descartes: The Correspondence between Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia and René Descartes. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007. 280 pp. $25.00 (paper), ISBN 978-0-226-20442-0.

Reviewed by Cornelia Niekus Moore (University of Hawaii, Honolulu)
Published on H-German (January, 2008)

The Princess and the Philosopher

During the years between 1643 and 1649, princess Elisabeth of Bohemia (1618-80) and René Descartes (1596-1650) exchanged fifty-eight letters: thirty-two from Descartes and twenty-six from Elisabeth. Descartes's letters were published during his lifetime and in many editions since. By her own directive, Elisabeth's letters were not published. Some have a checkered history of provenance, having been copied, lost, and rediscovered several times. This edition provides an English translation of all the letters exchanged between Descartes and Elisabeth surviving today. It also includes Elisabeth's correspondence with Quakers William Penn and Robert Barclay. The correspondence will be of great value to students of philosophy, women studies, and historians. The letters provide an insight into the political, philosophical, and religious situation of the time from the perspective of a keen, sympathetic, and knowledgeable participant and observer.

Historians have long been familiar with Descartes's side of the correspondence. His letters lend a new insight into his philosophy, in particular his account of the human being as a union of mind and body. They also illuminate his ethics, and show how his thoughts took shape and evolved during the time of the correspondence. Elisabeth's letters are her only known philosophical writing and they show her to be an active participant in this dialogue, providing well-founded opinions and keen reactions to the philosopher's thoughts as they took shape. They also reveal her mastery of metaphysics, analytic geometry, and moral philosophy, as well as a keen interest in natural philosophy. In her letters to Penn and Barclay, one sees another aspect of Elisabeth's interests. In these letters, she provides support and comfort to spiritual leaders, evidencing a tolerance and appreciation of different ideas.

The correspondence also provides an insight into the genre of the written letter--skirting the boundaries of public and private--and how scholars could use it to engage in a dialogue outside of the printed media even when face-to-face meetings were rare. Correspondence provided women like Elisabeth (and Anna Maria van Schurman) with a genre in which they too could excel. One also sees how a scholar like Descartes and a royal princess could find a mode of communicating that transcended class and gender boundaries without ever losing sight of either, allowing them to observe all the niceties and courtesies to which the aristocracy (and famous scholars) were entitled. In the correspondence with Barclay and Penn, Elisabeth provides encouragement in difficult times without surrendering her own beliefs. These letters also reveal how pleased Barclay and others were with the aristocratic attention bestowed on them.

Lisa Shapiro's superb translation of the Descartes-Elisabeth correspondence provides access to these two unique individuals. The translation captures the tone and the essence of the original French. The letters are preceded by an in-depth look at the history of the correspondence. Frequent notes clarify unclear passages. There are also two bibliographies. One contains primary and secondary sources for this particular volume; the other one is an up-to-date twenty-page bibliography of primary and secondary material concerning the history of women in the Middle Ages and early modern Europe.

Although the footnotes are mostly concise and informative, they are slightly less so for German situations and persons. For instance, Duke August of Brunswick-Lüneburg is mentioned three times (pp. 152, 154, 173). Elisabeth called him pedantic and not very receptive to Descartes's ideas. But his famous book collection--preserved in the library in Wolfenbüttel that carries his name--evinces a comprehensive collection of works by Descartes. Having made a separate peace with the emperor, Duke August was probably of little help in Elisabeth's efforts to restore the Palatinate to her family. However, August's son Anton Ulrich (1633-1714) dedicated the first volume of his novel, Aramena, to Elisabeth, and made her the godmother of his oldest daughter Elisabeth Eleonore, who actually spent two years in her care in Herford. Such information would have put the relationship between these two scholarly aristocrats in another light. In another footnote, Gichtel is not identified, but he is most likely the chiliast and spiritualist Johann Georg Gichtel (1638-1710).

This volume is part of a series "The Other Voice," which has already provided us with the works of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century authors like Katharina Zell, Luise Labé, Margherita Sarrocchi, and Vittoria Colonna and promises to do the same for Catharina Regina von Greiffenberg, Marguerite de Navarre, and Christine de Pizan, among others. The volumes in the series have been well executed and carefully edited. They make available otherwise inaccessible material in English translation. As in the other volumes, this one also contains the introduction to the series, a relentlessly negative, but well-founded account of the status of women in the Middle Ages and early modern Europe. In the nature of an introduction, it is general and makes few distinctions between classes, localities, and centuries, taking its examples over large periods of time and distant localities, mostly in western and southern Europe. However, the generally negative evaluation of women's position it delineates is not reflected in the letters in this particular volume. Elisabeth appears to have been hindered in her intellectual pursuits not so much by being female, but rather by the political machinations of her family. Like those of her siblings, Elisabeth's marital prospects were hampered by the political and financial misfortunes of her family, rather than her learnedness. If the editors continue to precede all volumes of the series with this introduction, it would be worthwhile to try to tie it in somehow with the particular content of the volumes, especially if the connection does not seem obvious, as in this case.

Overall, however, this volume provides access and an excellent introduction to a collection of letters by a woman who used her position, intellect, and compassion to engage in a dialogue in a medium open to her, for her benefit and that of her correspondents. It is to Lisa Shapiro's credit and that of the series editors to have facilitated this access in such a well-executed way.

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Citation: Cornelia Niekus Moore. Review of Shapiro, Lisa, ed., Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia and René Descartes: The Correspondence between Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia and René Descartes. H-German, H-Net Reviews. January, 2008.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=14101

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