Elisabeth of Bohemia (1618–1680): A Philosopher in her Historical Context

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xiii

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2. Introduction

   • Sabrina Ebbersmeyer, Sarah Hutton

   Pages 1-13

3. Elisabeth’s Intellectual World

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 15-15

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   2. Elisabeth of Bohemia’s Aristocratic Upbringing and Education at the Prinsenhof, Rapenburg 4–10, Leiden, c. 1627/8–32

      • Nadine Akkerman

      Pages 17-31

   3. Elisabeth of Bohemia’s Lifelong Friendship with Anna Maria van Schurman (1607–1678)

      • Mirjam de Baar

      Pages 33-49

   4. Elisabeth of Bohemia and the Sciences: The Case of Astronomy

      • Sabrina Ebbersmeyer

      Pages 51-70

   5. Princess Elisabeth and Anne Conway (1631–1679): The Interconnected Circles of Two Philosophical Women

      • Sarah Hutton

      Pages 71-86

4. Elisabeth’s Political Thought and Its Context

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 77-77

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   2. A Persistent Princess: How Elisabeth of Bohemia Constructed Her Personal Politics

      • Carol Pal

      Pages 89-107

   3. Elisabeth and Descartes Read Machiavelli in the Time of Hobbes

      • Gianni Paganini

      Pages 109-126

   4. Princess Elisabeth and the Challenges of Philosophizing

      • Lisa Shapiro

      Pages 127-141

5. Elisabeth’s Philosophical Thought in Her Exchange with Descartes

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 133-133

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   2. The Soul’s Extension: Elisabeth’s Solution to Descartes’s Mind–Body Problem

      • Lilli Alanen

      Pages 145-161

   3. Elisabeth on Free Will, Preordination, and Philosophical Doubt

      • Martina Reuter

      Pages 163-176

   4. Is Our Happiness up to Us? Elisabeth of Bohemia on the Limits of Internalism

      • Dominik Perler

      Pages 177-192

   5. The Feminine Body in the Correspondence Between Descartes and Elisabeth

      • Marie-Frédérique Pellegrin

      Pages 193-204

   6. What Is Elisabeth’s Cartesianism?

      • Denis Kambouchner

      Pages 205-214

6. Back Matter

   Pages 215-218

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This book showcases Elisabeth of Bohemia, Princess Palatine (1618-1680), one of the foremost female minds of the 17th century. Best known today for her important correspondence with the philosopher René Descartes, Elisabeth was famous in her own time for her learning, philosophical acumen, and mathematical brilliance. She was also well-connected in the seventeenth-century intellectual circles. Elisabeth’s status as a woman philosopher is emblematic of both the possibilities and limitations of women's participation in the republic of letters and of their subsequent fate in history. Few sources containing her own views survive, and until recently there has been no work on Elisabeth as a thinker in her own right. This volume brings together an international team of scholars to discuss her work from a cross-disciplinary perspective on the occasion of her fourth centenary. It is the first collection of essays to examine a range of her interests and to discuss them in relation to her historical context. The studies presented here discuss her educational background, her friendships and contacts, her interest in politics, religion, and astronomy, as well as her views on politics, her moral philosophy and her engagement with Cartesianism. The volume will appeal to historians of philosophy, historians of political thought, philosophers, feminists and seventeenth-century historians.

• Elisabeth of Bohemia
• René Descartes
• Early Modern Women philosophers
• The Feminine Body
• Political philosophy

“The excellent essays in this volume combine the expertise and insight of scholars in philosophy, history, religion, literature, and gender studies to give the best and most comprehensive account of Elisabeth’s thinking and context to date. … Many early modern scholars will find the volume of interest, especially those engaged in the ongoing recovery project concerning women philosophers and scientists. It would also be an excellent source of secondary literature for graduate seminars on Elisabeth.” (Alauren Samantha Forbes, Journal of the History of Philosophy, Vol. 61 (3), July, 2023)

• Section for Philosophy, Department of Communication, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

  Sabrina Ebbersmeyer

• Department of Philosophy, University of York, York, UK

  Sarah Hutton

Sabrina Ebbersmeyer is Associate Professor for the history of philosophy at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. Working primarily on Renaissance and Early Modern philosophy, her research focusses on debates in moral psychology and philosophy of mind, on humanism and gender in the historiography of philosophy. She has published on numerous Renaissance and Early Modern philosophers, including Isotta Nogarola, Bernardino Telesio, Elisabeth of Bohemia and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. She is author of Homo agens (Berlin, New York: de Gruyter 2010), has edited the volume Emotional Minds (Berlin, New York: de Gruyter 2012) and translated the letter exchange between Elisabeth of Bohemia and René Descartes into German (München: Fink 2015).


Sarah Hutton is Honorary Visiting Professor at the University of York. She has pioneered research on the history of women philosophers. Her publications include a monograph, Anne Conway. A Woman Philosopher (CUP), Women Science and Medicine co-edited with Lynette Hunter (Alan Sutton), and a revised edition of Conway Letters (first published by Marjorie Nicolson). She has also published articles on Margaret Cavendish, Damaris Masham, Mary Astell and Émilie du Chatelet.

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