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 Rene 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.

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.

Sabrina Ebbersmeyer and Sarah Hutton Introduction.- I Elisabeth’s intellectual world. Nadine Akkerman Elisabeth of Bohemia’s Aristocratic Upbringing and Education at the Prinsenhof, Rapenburg 4-10, Leiden, c. 1627/8-32.- Mirjam de Baar Elisabeth of Bohemia’s Lifelong Friendship with Anna Maria van Schurman (1607–1678).- Sabrina Ebbersmeyer Elisabeth of Bohemia and the Sciences: The Case of Astronomy.- Sarah Hutton Princess Elisabeth and Anne Conway: the interconnected Circles of Two Philosophical Women.- II Elisabeth’s political thought and its contextCarol Pal Persistent Princess: The Personal Politics of Elisabeth of Bohemia.- Gianni Paganini Elisabeth and Descartes read Machiavelli in the Time of Hobbes.- Lisa Shapiro Princess Elisabeth and the Challenges of Philosophizing.- III Elisabeth’s philosophical thought in exchange with Descartes Lilli Alanen The Soul’s Extension: Elisabeth's Solution to Descartes’s Mind-Body Problem.- Martina Reuter Elisabeth on Free Will, Preordination, and Philosophical Doubt.- Dominik Perler Is Our Happiness Up to Us? Elisabeth of Bohemia on the Limits of Internalism.- Marie-Frédérique Pellegrin The Feminine Body in the Correspondence between Descartes and Elisabeth.- Denis Kambouchner What is Elisabeth’s Cartesianism?