## 1. Life



Elisabeth Simmern van Pallandt, born on 26 December 1618, was the
third of thirteen children and eldest daughter of Frederick V, Elector
Palatine, and Elizabeth Stuart, daughter of James I of England and
sister of Charles I. She died on 8 February 1680, in Herford, Germany,
where she was abbess of the convent there.



In 1620, Frederick V, having been installed as King of Bohemia,
promptly lost his throne in events usually taken to have precipitated
the Thirty Years War. In the 1620s, Elisabeth lived in Brandenburg
with her grandmother and aunt until the children joined their parents,
living in exile, in The Hague, where they were sheltered by Maurice of
Nassau, Frederick's maternal uncle. Akkerman (2021) reconstructs
Elisabeth's education at the Prinsenhof, in Leiden, largely from
the memoirs of Elisabeth's sister Sophie, which were transcribed
by Leibniz. Although some of the details of Elisabeth's education
remain sketchy, it is clear that she and her siblings were tutored in
languages, including Greek, Latin, French, English and German and
perhaps others. We can infer that Elisabeth was taught logic,
mathematics, politics, philosophy and the sciences, and it is reported
that her intellectual accomplishments earned her the nickname
'La Greque' from her siblings. She also was schooled in
painting, music and dancing, and might well have been tutored by
Constantijn Huygens. Pal (2012) provides more detail of the
intellectual environment of the court in The Hague.



While her correspondence with Descartes comprises the only substantive
extant philosophical writings of Elisabeth of which we are currently
aware, we do know of other correspondence: with John Pell, concerning
Descartes's *Geometry;* exchanges with Quakers, including
Robert Barclay, George Keith, and William Penn; and letters written
both by and to her concerning political and financial matters in the
English Calendar of State Papers. There is also record of a brief
exchange with Nicholas Malebranche. She is also known to have been
connected to Francis Mercury van Helmont, who is reported to have been
at her deathbed. Ebbersmeyer (2020) provides the first inventory of
the extant correspondence of Elisabeth, which includes not only the
correspondence of which we were already aware and letters to family,
but also letters with intellectuals associated with her stay in
Heidelberg, where her elder brother Charles Louis was rebuilding the
University after the Thirty Years War, including correspondence in
which she circulated Descartes' mathematical letters to her. The
correspondence with Descartes reveals her to have been involved with
an appointment in mathematics to the University of Leiden,
contemporary discussions of astronomy (Ebbersmeyer 2018), the
dissemination of Cartesian natural philosophy in Germany (Shapiro
2019), as well as in negotiations on a number of matters, including
the imprisonment of her brother Rupert in conjunction with his efforts
around the English Civil War, negotiations of the marriage of her
sister Henrietta, negotiations of the Treaty of Westphalia, and the
finances of her family after the end of the Thirty Years War.



In 1660 Elisabeth entered the Lutheran convent at Herford, and in 1667
she became abbess of the convent. She seems to have been an effective
manager of the convent lands, but also she welcomed more marginal
religious sects, including the Labadists, at the request of Anna Maria
van Schurman (see De Baar 2021 for a discussion of the extended
friendship between Elisabeth and van Schurman), and Quakers, including
Penn and Barclay.



It is worth mentioning the accomplishments of some of her siblings. As
noted above, her older brother Charles Louis was responsible for
restoring the University of Heidelberg after the Thirty Years War.
Rupert, the brother born next after her, gained fame for his chemical
experiments as well as for his military and entrepreneurial exploits,
including the founding of the Hudson's Bay Company. Louise Hollandine,
a younger sister, was an accomplished painter and student of Gerritt
van Honthorst. Sophie, her youngest sister, became the electress of
Hanover and was renowned for her intellectual patronage, particularly
that of Leibniz. Sophie's daughter, Sophie-Charlotte, was tutored by
Leibniz, and both women carried on substantive philosophical
correspondence with Leibniz in which he clarified his philosophical
views. See Strickland (2011).


## 2. Early Interest in the Passions



Elisabeth seems to have taken an early interest in the passions, as
Edward Reynolds dedicated his *Treatise on the passions and the
faculties of the soule of man* (1640) to her. While there is
little information about its context, the dedication suggests that
Elisabeth had seen a draft of the work, and so one can infer that they
had some discussion or correspondence. Reynolds's work, while one of
the first self-standing treatments of the passions of the period,
draws largely on Aristotelian-Scholastic discussions. It does,
however, focus on the sensitivity of the passions to reason, and so
our capacity to correct our errant passions through reflection.


## 3. Intellectual Networks



In addition to her well-known correspondence with Descartes, discussed
in detail below, Elisabeth also had other extensive correspondence,
now documented in Ebbersmeyer (2020). Through this correspondence
scholars are beginning to gain a sense of her intellectual
networks.



Elisabeth corresponded with a number of prominent Quakers, including
Robert Barclay and William Penn, who visited her at the convent in
Herford. Though both Barclay and Penn attempt to gain Elisabeth as a
convert, she does not seem interested in engaging them philosophically
or theologically. Insofar as the Scottish Quakers played a strategic
role in the efforts to restore the throne, one can wonder whether her
engagement with them was simply political. On the other hand,
Elisabeth's long-standing interest in emerging alternative theories,
along with her interest in divine providence, makes it just as
plausible that she took a more intellectual interest in their world
view.



Hutton (2021) explores Elisabeth's connections to the Quakers in
more detail, through her correspondence with Robert Barclay and George
Keith, and aims to ascertain whether Elisabeth and Anne Conway knew
one another through those connections, as well as her connections with
Henry More, the Hartlib Circle, and Francis Mercury van Helmont, De
Baar (2021) considers Elisabeth's interest in religion more
generally through her correspondence with Anna Maria van Schurman.



Pal (2021) focuses on Elisabeth's family correspondence, as well
as her exchanges with Descartes and others, to argue that the
overarching concern of Elisabeth's intellectual interests was
the question of how best to rule.



Ebbersmeyer (2021), drawing on correspondence and on dedications of
books, demonstrates Elisabeth's awareness of and potential
involvement in a number of areas of natural philosophy, including
mathematics, medicine, microscopy, astronomy, and physics. Ebbersmeyer
goes on to explore the details of Elisabeth's interest in
astronomy through her exchanges with Constantijn Huygens and Andreas
Colvius, and to show that Elisabeth was involved in debates about the
discovery of the moons of Jupiter, emerging maps of the moon of Earth,
and the invention of new telescopes.


## 4. Correspondence with Rene Descartes



Elisabeth's correspondence with Descartes begins at her initiative in
1643 and continues until Descartes's death in early 1650. Elisabeth
does not seem to have produced any systematic philosophical work, and
her extant philosophical writings consist almost entirely of her
correspondence with Descartes. While we have Descartes's works, and
centuries of interpretation to contextualize his side of the exchange,
we do not have this larger picture in which to situate Elisabeth's
thoughts. Thus, any account of her proper philosophical position must
be gleaned through interpretation. It is evident from the
correspondence that Elisabeth has a remarkable and wide-ranging
critical philosophical acumen. Careful reading of her side of the
correspondence does suggest she has some positive philosophical
commitments of her own, on matters including the nature of causation,
the nature of the mind, explanations of natural phenomena, virtue, and
good governance.


### 4.1 Provenance



While many of Descartes's letters to Elisabeth were published in the
volumes of his correspondence edited by Clerselier after his death,
Elisabeth refused Pierre Chanut's request to publish her side of the
exchange. Elisabeth's side of the correspondence was first published
in a volume by A. Foucher de Careil, after he was alerted to its
existence by an antiquarian bookseller, Frederick Muller, who had
found a packet of letters in Rosendael, outside Arnhem. These same
letters are what appear in the *Oeuvres* of Descartes, edited
by Charles Adam and Paul Tannery. The letters from Rosendael are not
originals, but rather copies that date from the early 18th century.
While we do not know the provenance of the copies, the consistency of
their content with that of Descartes's letters, along with allusions
to events in Elisabeth's family and private life, argues strongly in
favor of the authenticity of the copies.


### 4.2 Mind-Body Interaction and the Nature of Mind



The correspondence between Elisabeth and Descartes begins with
Elisabeth's asking probing questions about how Descartes can explain
the ability of an immaterial substance to act on a material substance.
At issue in this initial query is the kind of causation operating
between mind and body. As Elisabeth frames the issues, existing
accounts tie causal efficacy to extension, and in this regard it is
significant that she poses her question about the mind's ability to
act on the body, and not the body's ability to affect the mind. To
account for the causal efficacy of an immaterial mind, Elisabeth
suggests that Descartes can articulate either the account of causation
proper to mind-body interaction or the substantial nature of the mind
such that existing accounts could explain its actions. Descartes's
response is not only evasive but opens up further issues, in
particular about whether the mind-body union is a third substance,
insofar as he appeals to the Scholastic notion of heaviness to address
Elisabeth's concerns (Garber 1983), and intimates there is a
contradiction in thinking of mind and body as both two distinct
substances and as united (Mattern 1978). In addition, in his
responses, Descartes jumps between the two separate issues of
mind-body and body-mind interaction (Rozemond 1999). My concern in
this entry is not, however, to articulate the views expressed in
Descartes's side of the correspondence.



This exchange reveals that Elisabeth is committed to a mechanist
account of causation--that is, one limited to efficient
causation. Elisabeth rejects Descartes's appeal to the Scholastic
conception of heaviness as a model through which to explain mind-body
interaction, on the grounds that, as Descartes himself previously
argued, it is unintelligible and inconsistent with a mechanist
conception of nature. That is, she squarely rejects the formal causal
explanatory model underlying the Scholastic notion of a real quality,
insofar as she refuses to consider that model appropriate in some
contexts. She is nonetheless open-minded about which account of
efficient causation ought to be adopted. This openness reveals that
she is apprised of debates about the nature of causation in the period
(Gabbey 1990, Clatterbaugh 1999, Nadler 1993). Elisabeth's investment
in the new science emerging in the seventeenth century is reflected in
what she writes regarding mathematics and natural philosophy,
discussed briefly in the next subsection.



Elisabeth's remarks to Descartes also suggest that she is willing to
revisit Descartes's substance dualism. She presses Descartes to
further articulate his account of substance, pointing not only to the
problem of mind-body interaction, but also to cases where the poor
condition of the body--the vapours, for instance--affects
capacity for thought. These cases, she intimates, would be more
straightforwardly explained by considering the mind to be material and
extended. The issue of the role of the condition of the body in our
capacity for thought also figures in the correspondence of 1645,
concerning the regulation of the passions, from both a theoretical and
a personal perspective. Elisabeth maintains that we have autonomy of
thought--that we have control over what we think and can turn our
attention from one object to another-- and so that the order of
thought does not depend on the causal order of material things.
However, at the same time she acknowledges that the capacity for
thought, and the free will essential to it, is dependent on the
overall condition of the body. Elisabeth thus rejects an account of
mind that reduces thinking to bodily states, but at the same time she
calls into question the idea that the capacity of thinking exists
wholly independently of body, that is, that a thinking thing is
substance properly speaking. As Alanen (2021) puts it, what is at
issue in this exchange is how to understand the agency proper to
thought. Shapiro (1999 and 2007) suggests that while Elisabeth might
be willing to revisit substance dualism, she does not advocate clearly
for any alternative. Janssen-Lauret (2018) maintains that in the end
Elisabeth endorses substance dualism and argues that Elisabeth
subscribes to a naturalistic dualism, which holds that the soul is
both conscious and extended without endorsing materialism.



Interestingly, Elisabeth introduces her own nature as female as one
bodily 'condition' that can impact reason. While Descartes
concedes that a certain threshold of bodily health is necessary for
the freedom that characterizes rational thought, he disregards
Elisabeth's appeal to the "weakness of my sex" (Shapiro
1999). Pellegrin (2021), in analyzing how the female body figures in
the correspondence between Descartes and Elisabeth, argues that the
very idea of a weak sex is antithetical to Cartesianism.


### 4.3 Mathematics and Natural Philosophy



In letters of November 1643, shortly after the initial exchange
concerning the union of mind and body, Descartes sets Elisabeth the
classic geometrical problem of the three circles or Apollonius's
problem: to find a circle that touches each of three given circles on
a plane. While Elisabeth's solution is no longer available,
Descartes's comments indicate that Elisabeth had already mastered
techniques of algebraic geometry. She is thought to have learned them
from Johan Stampioen's textbook. Elisabeth's approach to the problem
seems to have differed from Descartes's own, and Descartes remarks on
her solution having a symmetry and transparency in virtue of its using
only a single variable that his lacked. Elisabeth's recognized
mathematical acumen is also evidenced by her involvement in the hiring
of Frans van Schooten to the mathematical faculty at Leiden and John
Pell's effort to enlist her help in understanding Descartes's
*Geometry*.



In 1644, Descartes dedicated his *Principles of Philosophy* to
Elisabeth. In that work, Descartes not only presents his metaphysics
in textbook form, he also lays out his physics in some detail.
Elisabeth responds to the dedication with gratitude, but also by
offering criticisms of Descartes's accounts of magnetic attraction and
the heaviness of mercury.



Also in the correspondence, Elisabeth shows herself to have a keen
interest in the workings of the physical world and in efficient causal
explanations of natural phenomena: she criticizes Kenelm Digby's
reading of Descartes; she requests the works of Hogelande and Regius;
she reports on various observed phenomena, and in particular on
diseases and cures, while looking for acceptable efficient causal
explanations of them. This commitment efficient causal explanations
leads her to try to disseminate Cartesian physics in Germany.



Ebbersmeyer (2021), as noted above, demonstrates how Elisabeth's
interest in natural philosophy was not limited to her correspondence
with Descartes, and moreover, continued after Descartes's
death.



Shapiro (2019) argues that with respect to natural philosophy,
Elisabeth ought to be understood as a Cartesian. Kambouchner (2021)
argues that consideration of Elisabeth's views on practical and
civil life shows that in this respect Elisabeth is not a Cartesian,
though he also suggests that Descartes himself may not be a dogmatic
Cartesian either.


### 4.4 The Passions and Moral Philosophy



In his letters to Elisabeth of 1645 and 1646, Descartes develops his
moral philosophy, and in particular, his account of virtue as being
resolved to do that which we judge to be the best. His letters begin
as an effort to address a persistent illness of Elisabeth, which
Descartes diagnoses as the manifestation of a sadness, no doubt due to
the events of the English Civil War. As Elisabeth herself puts it, he
"has the kindness to want to cure [her] body with [her]
soul" (AT 4:208, 24 May 1645). While they begin by reading
Seneca's *De Vita Beata*, they both agree that the work is not
sufficiently systematic, and discussion turns to Descartes's own
views. Once again, Elisabeth, in her letters, plays a principally
critical role.



Her criticisms of Descartes intertwine three distinct philosophical
positions. First, she takes up the position of Aristotelian virtue
ethics, in objecting that Descartes's very liberal account of virtue,
which requires only the intention to do good, does not require that
one's good intentions are realized in actions that are actually good.
That is, she notes that Descartes makes virtue impervious to fortune
or moral luck. She, however, goes beyond the canonical Aristotelian
position to maintain that even our ability to reason is subject to
luck. (This position helps to illuminate her view on the nature of the
human mind. See the discussion in section 3.2 above.) Elisabeth also
takes up a classically Stoic position, insofar as she objects to the
way in which Descartes's account of virtue separates virtue from
contentment. She objects that Descartes's account of virtue allows for
the virtuous agent to make mistakes, and she does not see how an agent
can avoid regret in the face of those mistakes. Insofar we regret when
even our best intentions go awry, we can be virtuous and fail to be
content. While it is unclear whether her objection is a psychological
one or a normative one, she does maintain that achieving contentment
requires an 'infinite science' (4:289) so that we might
know all of the impact of our actions, and so properly evaluate them.
Without a faculty of reason that is already perfected, on her view,
not only will we not be able to achieve virtue, we also will not rest
content. (See Shapiro 2012 for an interpretation of these remarks.
Perler (2021) situates this discussion within a contemporary framework
of internalism and externalism and argues that Elisabeth replaces
Descartes' internalist conception of happiness with a more
complex conception that takes both internal and external factors into
account.) On her view, not only the right use of our rational
faculties but also the right conditions for using them are required
for obtaining happiness.



In the context of this exchange, in the same letter of 13 September
1645, Elisabeth asks Descartes to "define the passions, in order
to know them better" (AT 4: 289). It is this request that leads
Descartes to draft a treatise on the passions, on which Elisabeth
comments in her letter of 25 April 1646, and which is ultimately
published in 1649 as *The Passions of the Soul*. Elisabeth's
concerns about our ability to properly evaluate our actions lead her
to express a further concern, this time about the possibility of
measuring value objectively, given that we each have personal biases,
whether by temperament or by matters of self-interest. Without a
proper measure of value, she implies, Descartes's account of virtue
cannot even get off the ground, for it is not clear what should
constitute our best judgement of what is the best course of action.
Behind Elisabeth's objection here is a view of ethics akin to that of
Hobbes and other contractarians, 
which takes the good to be a matter
of balancing of competing self-interests.



In his letter of 15 September 1645 Descartes aims to answer some of
her concerns by outlining a set of metaphysical truths knowledge of
which will suffice in guiding our practical judgements, including that
all things depend on God (who exists), the nature of the human mind
and its immortality, and the vast extent of the universe (15 September
1645; AT 4:292). Elisabeth responds by asserting that these
considerations just open more problems--of explaining human free
will, of how understanding the immortality of the soul can make us
seek death, and of distinguishing particular providence from the idea
of God--without providing any guidance for evaluating things
properly. (See Schmaltz 2019 and Reuter 2021 for interpretations of
Elisabeth's view on free will and divine providence.)


### 4.5 Political Philosophy



Elisabeth's interest in properly evaluating actions and their outcomes
is clearly related to her position as an exiled Princess, one with
hopes that her family will regain some of their political power. She
is particularly concerned with the problems that rulers face making
decisions that stand to impact a large group of people with incomplete
information. To this end, she asks Descartes to present the central
maxims "concerning civil life" (AT 4:406, 25 April 1646),
and for his thoughts on Machiavelli's *The Prince*. Descartes
politely refuses the former, but offers his thoughts on the latter in
his letter of September 1646. Elisabeth offers her own reading in her
letter of 10 October 1646. In her view Machiavelli's focus on a state
that is the most difficult to govern does provide useful guidance for
achieving stability, but affords little for how to proceed in
governing a stable state. Paganani (2021) situates this exchange
within the broader 17th century context, both the political
realities and the political philosophy, and in particular, Hobbes. He
argues that Elisabeth took Machiavelli's realism as a starting
point, to begin to work through her own solution to how to resolve the
conflicts arising from competing evaluations of self-interested
agents, each moved by their own desires and passions, and ensure
mutual security, peace, and insofar as possible individual well-being.
Elisabeth rejects Descartes'appeal to divine guarantee, and,
perhaps rooted in her own actual practice and public role, favours a
pragmatic and operational approach to navigating charged political
realities. He argues that she puts forward a distinctive position on
the politics of moral action, and in particular on the problem of how
natural law applies in a wicked world.



Shapiro (2021) explores a remark Elisabeth makes in her letter to
Descartes of 4 December 1649 on the apparent incompatibility of
governing and philosophizing (AT 5:452), and argues that Elisabeth
recognizes that rulers, and not simply their subjects, inevitably have
their own passions, which must be regulated according to the demands
of their office. These practical demands, and in particular the time
constraints of their decision-making, can leave a ruler with a very
different affective profile from that of the philosopher.



Given the suggestion of Pal (2021) that Elisabeth's own
interests centred on how to govern well, this part of her
correspondence gains significance. It is reasonable to assume that
further consideration on these issues informed her management of the
convent at Herford, and perhaps led her to find a way both to govern
and to pursue her intellectual interests at the same time.