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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Feminist interpretations of Rene Descartes / edited by Susan Bordo.
p. em. - (Re-reading the canon)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-271-01857-7 (cloth: alk. paper)
ISBN 0-271-01858-5 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Descartes, Rene, 1596-1650. 2. Feminist theory.
Susan, 1947- . II. Series.
B1875.F46 1999
194-dc21
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 9 Descartes's Mood
Descartes's Mood:
The Question of Feminism in the
Correspondence with Elisabeth
Thomas E. Wartenberg
If thou wilt weep my fortunes, take my eyes.
King Lear (IV, vi, 172)
I ner, since he passes over her introductory remarks and begins his reply
t1 June 1643, Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia wrote to Descartes, inform-
ing him that, despite his earlier response to her queries, she was still
having trouble understanding his claim that there was an interaction
between the mind (or "soul") and the body. She introduced her objection
to this idea in the following manner:
I must confess that . . . I find in myself all the causes of error
which you mention in your letter, and I am unable to banish
them entirely, because the life I am constrained to lead does not
permit me enough time at my disposal to acquire a habit of medi-
tation according to your rules. From time to time the interests of
191
my House, which I must not neglect, or the conversations and
amusements that I cannot evade, beset my feeble mind so
strongly with annoyances and boredom that it becomes, for a
long time thereafter, useless for anything else. This will serve, I
hope, as an excuse for my stupidity in being unable to understand
the idea by which we must judge how the soul (unextended and
immaterial) can move the body, in terms of the notion which
you previously had of gravity. (Descartes 1969, 376) 1
There are a number of interesting features in this letter. Not the least is
Elisabeth's criticism for Descartes's use of the gravity analogy to explain
the idea of mind-body interaction. 2 I shall begin, however, by exploring
Elisabeth's claim that the press of household affairs-"the interests of
my House"-induces in her a state of mind inhospitable to philosophic
reflection.
The context for Elisabeth's complaint makes it difficult to know ex-
actly how seriously to take it. In her previous letter (dated May 6/16,
1643 ), Elisabeth had asked Descartes to explain his conception of mind-
body interaction more fully. Because she now intends to press that query
once again, Elisabeth's invocation of her inability to get into the requisite
state of mind might simply be an act of courtesy, one that permits her
to advance her criticism of Descartes without appearing rude. Indeed,
employing this linguistic strategy allows Elisabeth herself to shoulder the
blame for her inability to form a clear idea of the interaction between
the mental and the physical, rather than to blame Descartes.
Descartes himself seems to interpret Elisabeth's comment in this man-
with a discussion of mind-body interaction. In response to Elisabeth's
continued pressure, he admits that he had not presented his view of that
interaction as clearly as he might have: "I am very much obligated to
your Highness because, after you have seen that I explained myself badly
in my previous letter on the question it pleased you to ask me, you still .
accord me the patience to listen to me again on the same subject, and
that you afford me the occasion to note the things which I have omitted"
(1969, 377). Here we see Descartes employing language of deferential
politeness before proceeding to the matter at hand, namely, answering
Elisabeth's question/objection. Relying on the formalized politeness of
Descartes's letter, we might be tempted to read Elisabeth's complaint as
192 Descartes and Women
itself a form of deference to Descartes that allows her to then turn to the
actual substance of her letter.
This reading cannot be maintained, however, for Descartes does re-
spond to Elisabeth's complaint. In regard to her statment that "the inter-
ests of [her] House" make it impossible for her to devote the required
attention to metaphysical issues, Descartes tells Elisabeth that he does
not believe that such distractions are the cause of her inability to under-
stand the interaction between the mind and the body. After all, he points
out, the amount of time that is required for philosophical meditation is
not great enough to be rendered impossible by Elisabeth's more practical
concerns.
I'm almost afraid that your Highness may think that I am not
speaking seriously here.... I can say, truthfully, that the chief
rule that I have always observed in my studies, and that which I
think has been most useful to me in acquiring knowledge, has
been that I have devoted only a very few hours each day to
thoughts which occupy imagination, and a very few hours, each
year, to those which occupy the understanding alone, and I have
given all the rest of my time to the relaxation of the senses and
to the repose of mind ... It is this which has led me to withdraw
to the country. Even though in the busiest city in the world I
could have as many hours to myself as I employ now in study,
nonetheless I could not employ them so efficiently when my in-
tellect would be tired by the attention that the bustle of life
requires. (1969, 378-79)
Descartes's discussion of the time required for philosophic reflection is
itself significant, for it modifies certain aspects of the initial passage of his
Meditations on First Philosophy. The Meditations begins with a description
of the sort of situation in which the narrator has placed himself in order
to make the task of meditation possible. "Therefore, now that I have
freed my mind from all cares, and I have secured for myself some leisurely
and carefree time, I withdraw in solitude" (1980, 57). 3 The narrator here
characterizes himself as self-consciously placing himself in an isolated
situation, one that frees him from the normal context of ordinary life.4
In this new context, he claims, his meditations on the proper way to
produce a foundation for the sciences can proceed without distraction.
Descartes's Mood 193
Descartes's remarks in his letter to Elisabeth qualify the need for such
a withdrawal to the country. At least partially in order to let Elisabeth
know that she does possess-in his opinion at least-the time required
for philosophic meditation, Descartes now says that his withdrawal to the
country was less a necessity than an efficient means. Even in a busy city,
he says, he could have pursued his meditations, albeit less efficiently.
As a result, Descartes urges, Elisabeth should not despair at living in
circumstances that are not as conducive to the meditative practices she
wishes to pursue as she would like, for the time demanded by philosophic
refection is not as great as she seems to imagine.
Descartes continues by telling Elisabeth that he believes that her in-
ability to form a clear conception of mind-body intereaction has a differ-
ent source, one other than the press of "the interests of [her] House":
For that reason I take the liberty of expressing here to your High-
ness my true appreciation of your ability, among the affairs and
cares which are never lacking to those who are at the same time
of great mind and of great birth, to find leisure to attend to those
meditations which are requisite to understanding fully the dis-
tinction between the soul and the body. But I am of the opinion
that it was these meditations, rather than the thoughts which
require less attention, which cause you to find some obscurity in
the notion that we have of their union. (1969, 379)
Even as he acknowledges Elisabeth's complaint that the circumstances of
her life make it impossible for her to meditate effectively, and thus keep
her from understanding the idea of mind-body interaction, Descartes sug-
gests an alternative explanation of her difficulty. The impediment to her
reflection, he proposes, is the complexity of the required reflection, not
the distraction caused by her household concerns. Indeed, although he
expresses his admiration of her for undertaking the task of philosophic
meditation, Descartes politely and carefully admonishes Elisabeth not to
use her own affairs as an excuse for not pursuing the difficult course of
philosophic meditation.
But even though Descartes responds to Elisabeth's complaint-
thereby treating it as significant and not simply a rhetorical device-
there is one aspect of it that he fails to address. Although Elisabeth had
said that her household affairs put her in a mood that made it hard to do
 194 Descartes and Women
anything, let alone philosophy-"my feeble mind ... becomes, for a long
time thereafter, useless for anything else," she says-Descartes responds
to her as if she had only complained that she lacked the time for philo-
sophic reflection. The central project of this essay will be to investigate if
there might not be more to Elisabeth's complaint than that to which
Descartes responded.
For this purpose, it will be useful to reflect upon the curious nature of
the roles that both Descartes and Elisabeth take in this exchange. In the
course of her letter, Elisabeth raises a serious difficulty for the Cartesian
philosophy, namely that of explaining the possibility of an interaction
between the two distinct substances that Descartes maintains compose
the human being. Since a substance is defined as an entity that exist
independently of other entities, there is reason to support Elisabeth's
criticism of Descartes's assertion that there can be interaction between,
and hence dependence among, substances of different types. Indeed, this
is a serious problem for Descartes's theory, one that frequently has been
seen as the Achilles' heel of his position. 5 In the course of her letter,
Elisabeth flatly maintains that Descartes's attempt to elucidate the idea
of such interaction by use of the idea of gravity makes the idea of mind-
body interaction less, rather than more, plausible: "It is more likely that
the demonstration ... would strengthen our belief in the impossibility
[of soul moving body] ... I confess that it would be easier for me to
concede matter and extension to the soul, than the capacity to move a
body and to be moved to an immaterial being" (Descartes 1969, 376).
But despite the seriousness of the problem that Elisabeth raises for
Descartes's position and the directness of her challenge to him, the terms
in which both she and Descartes address one another never contains an
acknowledgment on either of their parts that she is making an objection
to his theory. Elisabeth defines her own position as that of an eager stu-
dent who is trying hard to understand the ideas of her teacher and men-
tor. It is within this understanding of the positions of the two
correspondents that Elisabeth places her objection, thus rendering it less
an objection than a request for further explanation.
Descartes himself accepts with no second thoughts the role of teacher
in which Elisabeth places him. In fact, after explaining his own view he
goes on to give Elisabeth suggestions on what she needs to do in order to
understand it correctly. As we have seen, he even chides Elisabeth for
attempting to blame her lack of understanding on the affairs of her
House, thereby failing to treat her remarks as an objection to his theory.
Descartes's Mood 195
It is possible that the roles that Elisabeth and Descartes take with
regard to one another might accurately reflect their true estimation of
both their own position and that of the other. Elisabeth may have
thought of herself as a pupil of the learned philosopher who was instruct-
ing her on the correct opinions to hold. As part of her trainiRg, she would
have to express her own inability to grasp some of the truths with which
Descartes was attempting to instruct her. On this interpretation-which
seems to be Descartes's-her letter would express this inability, while
nonetheless maintaining her full trust in Descartes's ability to set her
straight.
However, it is also possible that either or both of the correspondents
might have viewed the language in which they conducted their corre-
spondence simply as trappings, polite conventions that were required in
order for them to communicate with each other, but that do not reflect
their true estimation of either each one's own position or that of the
other. The reason that they might have written to one another in terms
that camouflaged the actual nature of the interaction has to do with
the two different and competing power relations-those of gender and
class-in which they were situated. On the one hand, Elisabeth is a
woman trying to have a serious philosophic interchange with one of the
most famous male philosophers of her time. This gender power relation-
ship would cause her to be deferential to the famous philosopher in order
to be sure of his continued interaction. 6 On the other hand, because
Elisabeth is a member of the nobility her good graces might be of material
significance to the philosopher, thus causing him to remain deferential
to her. The presence of these power relationships makes it difficult to
determine exactly which elements in the language of the exchange are
simply conventions that result from those power relations and which are
genuinely reflective of the correspondents' self-understandings.
If we accept such a reading of the correspondence, then we might see
Elisabeth's deference to the celebrated philosopher as simply a conven-
tion that she adopts in order to make the correspondence possible. Her
use of phrases such as "my feeble mind" would then be expressions of
such deference that do not reflect her understanding of either who she is
or of the worth of what she is saying. We would then be justified in
going beyond these trappings in order to expose the real philosophic
conversation taking place within them. 7 Rather than accepting Elisa-
beth's consignment to the position of well-intentioned student, we may
attribute to her an important objection to Descartes's theory, an objec-
 196 Descartes and Women
tion that would qualify her as having made a significant contribution to
the development of early modern Western philosophy.
Evidence in favor of this view is suggested in a letter that is published
as part of the introduction to Descartes's The Passions of the Soul. In his
published response to the letter of an anonymous friend asking that he
publish that work, Descartes explains that it would be difficult to publish
this text because he wrote it for Elisabeth and only explained that which
he thought needed to be explained to her. "Inasmuch as I composed it
only to be read by a Princess whose mind is so far above the ordinary that
she effortlessly understands what seems to be most difficult to our schol-
ars, I paused therein to explain only what I thought was new" (1989, 16).
In attempting to justify his reticence about publishing The Passion of the
Soul, Descartes makes an important admission. He states that he had
written the work for Elisabeth. Since The Passions of the Soul contains
Descartes's explicit account of how the mind and body interact in the
formation of passions, that work provides the account of mind-body in-
teraction that Elisabeth had demanded of Descartes in order to allay her
doubts about the coherence of the idea. 8 This account of the origin of
The Passions of the Soul suggests that Descartes attributed more force to
Elisabeth's objections than that allowed by the terms of their correspon-
dence, since he acknowledges that a complex theory of mind-body inter-
action is required as a means of addressing Elisabeth's concern.
We therefore are justified in explicitly acknowledging that the terms
within which the correspondence between Descartes and Elisabeth was
conducted makes the nature of Elisabeth's contributions difficult to dis-
cern, for the rituals of polite deference that she employs place her in the
role of eager student rather than philosophic critic. By placing herself in
this role, Elisabeth was able to give voice to her own philosophic ideas,
albeit in a covert form. An important task for the contemporary study of
philosophic texts is that of calling attention to places where we now see
such voices tentatively emerging. This is one way to change our under-
standing of the nature of the Western philosophic tradition and, in par-
ticular, the role that "those who have been excluded"-such as
women-have played in its formation.9
We can therefore do Elisabeth more justice than Descartes did within
~he c~rrespondence itself by characterizing the correspondence as a place
m whtch a woman was able to give voice to a significant philosophic idea
and thus play an active role in the development of Western philosophic
thought. 10 Although Descartes seems to interpret Elisabeth's objection as
Descartes's Mood 197
simply asserting that he has not provided an adequate elucidation of one
of the central theses of his philosophy, Elisabeth is actually objecting to
Descartes's account of mind-body interaction and forcing him to defend
his view with greater clarity and precision.
II
If we are prepared to admit that Elisabeth has raised an important objec-
tion to Descartes's theory in her letter to him, does that exhaust the
philosophic significance of her letter? What about her complaint that
"the interests of [her] House" made it impossible for her to pursue her
philosophic meditations? Are we content to treat this complaint as sim-
ply part of the polite ritual that Elisabeth uses to allow her to criticize
her philosophic mentor and teacher? Or is there a philosophic claim at
issue in this complaint that is, once again, obscured if one interprets this
claim in too simplistic a manner? My aim in this essay is to develop an
interpretation of this complaint that gives voice to the philosophic con-
tent of the complaint in a manner that Elisabeth could not.
It is perhaps worth noting the speculative nature of this enterprise. I
am seeking to provide Elisabeth with a philosophic voice that she herself
was only partially able to command. As such, the results may appear to
have more to do with my own understanding of Descartes's theory than
with Elisabeth's. However, the point that I wish to make is that the role
that Elisabeth seemed compelled to adopt in order to correspond with
her famous mentor has not allowed the force of her objections to his
theory to be adequately appreciated.
We have seen that, in the case of her request for an explanation of
mind-body interaction, Elisabeth conducted her correspondence with
Descartes in terms that belie its philosophic content. She phrased a seri-
ous objection to the coherence of Descartes's theory as a request for fur-
ther elucidation from the esteemed philosopher. I now want to ask
whether her complaint about not being able to meditate philosophically
might not cover an important philosophic point that has been missed by
subsequent interpreters who have not paid sufficient attention to the
terms within which Descartes and Elisabeth address one another.
I shall proceed by interpreting this complaint as the expression of a
philosophic claim, thereby attributing to Elisabeth the claim that philos-
198 Descartes and Women
ophy is an activity that can be pursued only in a certain setting. Insofar
as she is making this claim, Elisabeth would be allied with those contem-
porary feminist thinkers who have argued for such a view. 11
One argument in favor of this interpretation is that Descartes seems to
take Elisabeth to be making such a claim, for, as I pointed out, he re-
sponds to her complaint by modifying the version of this claim that he
made in the Meditations, affirming that his withdrawal to the country was
merely an efficient means of pursuing philosophic meditation. Even with
this modification, however, Descartes accepts the claim that philosophy
can take place only within an appropriate setting.
So let us explore more closely the claim that there is a set of conditions
required for philosophic meditation. At a first pass, the assertion is that a
person must be sufficiently separated from the normal press of daily life,
in other words, have a certain amount of leisure time at his or her dis-
posal, in order to undertake philosophic reflection. This claim is, of
course, not one that most thinkers would contest. If one is to be able to
pursue the course of one's thought, one must be free from the cares of
daily life, even if only for the amount of time that one is actually pursuing
philosophic activity. Once philosophic reflection is thought of as an ac-
tivity that actual human beings engage in, it becomes clear that it is an
activity that can be pursued only in the absence of other activities, such
as that of comforting one's spouse, making a meal to feed one's children,
or even receiving guests at court. 12
This point needs to be distinguished from the claim that philosophy is
a specialized activity that can only be pursued by professionals who are
excused from other types of activities. The presence of such figures as
that of the great lens-grinding philosopher makes it clear that one can be
a philosopher and a laborer as well. But to pursue the activity of philoso-
phy, one must be able to secure for oneself a space-both literally and
metaphorically-within which the demands of those other activities are
sufficiently silenced that the rigors of the intellectual practice known as
philosophy can assume priority of place in the philosopher's mind.
Even though the idea that reflective thought can only occur in the
right context may seem obvious once one reflects upon it, it is important
to realize that it is a truth whose importance has been underestimated,
for example, within the empiricist tradition. The most basic model of
thinking employed by that tradition does not emphasize the significance
of the context for the possibility of reflective thought. Relying on Aristot-
le's metaphysical account of thought, empiricists have generally employed
Descartes's Mood 199
a perceptual model of thought, one that conceives of thinking as a proc-
ess that employs as its materials impressions made upon the mind by
existent entities. 13 The human mind has the ability to work with these
impressions in a number of different ways, for example by comparing
different impressions with one another. These abilities can be themselves
the objects of our (internal) perception, giving rise to a set of reflective
ideas.
The central feature of this account is its modeling of reflective, philo-
sophic thought on perception. The problem with this analogy is its sup-
port of the view that reflective thought is as natural and unavoidable a
part of human life as the perception of external reality. Since it is part of
the endowment of all human beings that they be able to perceive the
external world, 14 this model encourages the treatment of reflective
thought as likewise a part of our natural endowment, a feature of our-
selves that we inherit as part of our make up. Once reflective thought is
viewed in this manner, the question of the appropriate context for its
possibility seems misguided. Although certain contexts-such as the
threatening approach of a carriage or an elephant-may make philo-
sophic reflection somewhat difficult, all human beings insofar as they are
human are taken to have the ability to pursue reflective thought should
they choose to do so.
By refusing to go along with this empiricist account, Descartes chal-
lenges the transparency of philosophic thought. By making an issue of the
conditions necessary for philosophic thought, Descartes begins to make
philosophic activity itself problematic, and thus itself an object of philo-
sophic attention. He thereby admits the need for an investigation into
the conditions that are necessary for philosophy itself to be possible as a
form of human activity, thus acknowledging philosophy as a specific ac-
tivity in which the philosopher is able to engage as a result of the pres-
ence of specific circumstances. I shall call this the thesis of the
contextuality of philosophic thought. Interestingly enough, Descartes's own
acknowledgment of the significance of context for philosophic reflection
aligns him with the contemporary feminist theorists I cited earlier (see
note 11).
But the question of context as raised by feminist thinkers and by Elisa-
beth cannot be reduced to the claim that women have lacked the leisure
time for intellectual pursuits-though that is, of course, also one of their
concerns, and one that Elisabeth shares. In order to distinguish this claim
from the stronger thesis mentioned above, I shall refer to it as the thesis
200 Descartes and Women
of the demanding character of women's lives. Feminists have maintained
that women have been so caught up in their household concerns that
they cannot even use whatever leisure they might be able to secure to
develop and exercise their intellectual talents and capacities. This is an
issue that we have seen Elisabeth approach in her complaint to Descartes
that "the interests of [her] House" make her distracted and thus unable
to pursue philosophic thought. It is this latter aspect of her complaint to
which Descartes failed to respond, even as he tried to convince Elisabeth
that she did not lack the time to pursue her philosophic meditations.
The question of whether women's lives make it impossible for them to
pursue serious projects is one that has also been thematized by many
feminist writers at least from Virginia Woolf onward, although generally
not in the context of the necessary prerequisites for philosophic activ-
ity.15 They have argued that the press of daily life weighs on women in
such a way that they have been unable to pursue certain intellectual and
artistic concerns. In the complaint of this seventeenth-century noble-
woman to her philosophic mentor and teacher, we can see one of the
earliest recorded versions of this feminist claim.
Elisabeth's statement about her inability to pursue philosophic medita-
tion thus assumes greater significance than simply a complaint by a no-
blewoman of Descartes's time that the life she was constrained to lead
made it difficult for her to meditate philosophically, and thus unable to
understand the idea of mind-body interaction. For in this claim we can
discern the presence of a feminist consciousness that was unable to ex-
press itself fully because of the context within which it was located. Elisa-
beth is asserting that the type of life that she is constrained to lead-the
demands of this woman's life-makes it impossible for her to perform the
mental act of abstraction that is required for philosophic meditation.
Descartes, despite his acknowledgment of the significance of context for
philosophic thought, fails to even hear Elisabeth's expression of this
claim.
III
So far, I have suggested that we can interpret Elisabeth as making two
important philosophic points. The first is a criticism of Descartes's ac-
count of mind-body interaction. The second is an assertion of the sig-
Descartes's Mood 201
nificance of context for the pursuit of philosophic reflection. I now want
to push my attempt to provide Elisabeth with a philosophic voice that
she did not fully possess by asking whether there might not be some
common ground from which these two points emerge in Elisabeth's corre-
spondence. That is, can we find some philosophic view that might ex-
plain why Elisabeth responded to Descartes's philosophic theory in the
way that she did?
I shall argue that Elisabeth can be interpreted as criticizing Descartes
for failing to contextualize his metaphysical account of the human being.
In this sense, Elisabeth is claiming that Descartes-despite his accep-
tance of the contextuality of philosophic thought-failed to pursue the
implications of that idea far enough. On this interpretation, Elisabeth's
criticism of Descartes is that he fails to see that the self that he claimed
to uncover via philosophic meditation was really a self that had been
constituted by that very activity.
At this stage in my argument, I will be attributing to Elisabeth a
thought that seems quite distant from the statements she actually makes
in her letter. I do so, however, in order to show that that text may have
been conditioned by the presence of an idea that Elisabeth was herself
unable to consciously formulate. Ever since Freud demonstrated that in-
terpreting crucial "texts" of human life-from dreams to jokes and slips of
the tongue-required acknowledging the role that unconscious thoughts
played in their formation, it has been clear that human intellectual prod-
ucts are not under the full conscious control of their authors. The con-
scious life of human beings takes place against a background of
unconscious thoughts and feelings that cannot emerge into consciousness
without causing great psychic distress. As a result, these unconscious
thoughts can only emerge in a coded, disguised form that ensures that
they will not be recognized by their authors. Even though social conven-
tion and individual psychic economy may blind authors to the presence
of traces of s~ch unconscious thoughts in their texts, it is our job as
textual interpreters to move beyond the point of view of their authors. In
the reading that follows, I shall be interpreting Elisabeth's statements
with an eye to the presence of a thought that she cannot consciously
acknowledge. In so doing, I shall assume that a philosophic text-like a
dream or a slip of the tongue-has seams, places where thoughts emerge
against the conscious beliefs of their authors. A central goal of my read-
ing is precisely to uncover the presence of just such a seam in the ex-
change between Descartes and Elisabeth. 16
 202 Descartes and Women
In order to understand the criticism of Descartes that I am now attrib-
uting to Elisabeth, we need to look more carefully at the argument of
the Meditations. In the Meditations, Descartes presents the central task of
philosophy as that of establishing certainty, of providing a firm founda-
tion for the sciences. He describes this task as necessary because many
uncertainties have crept into his beliefs, thus undermining the founda-
tions of the edifice of human knowledge: "Several years have now passed
since I first realized how many were the false opinions that in my youth I
took for true, and thus how doubtful were all the things that I subse-
quently built upon these opinions" (1980, 57). This problem dictates the
double program of the Meditations: of rejecting those beliefs that have
been weakened by the possibility of deception and of reestablishing belief
on a certain and indubitable foundation.
The specific means whereby Descartes proposes to effect this program
are the unseating of the senses as the source of truth about reality and
their replacement by the intellect. It thus makes sense to characterize the
project of the Meditations as that of bringing about a cognitive revolution,
in other words, a revolution in the faculty that a person uses to fix his or
her beliefs about reality.
I choose the term cognitive in order to indicate that Descartes posits
two components to this revolution. The first component is epistemic; it
requires the legitimation of the intellect rather than of the senses as the
appropriate faculty to use in determining the nature of reality. This re-
quires the legitimation of an epistemic principle based on the intellect
rather than the senses as that which can secure certainty.
However, Descartes does not think that his cognitive revolution is
simply an epistemic matter, something that can be settled by judging that
one epistemic principle of belief is superior to another. For the cognitive
revolution to be successful, the new source of belief must take over the
senses' role as the determiner of belief in the actual context of the per-
son's life. There is therefore a psychological aspect to Descartes's cognitive
revolution, an attempt to establish new habits of belief that will not be
plagued by doubts and uncertainties. Recognizing that human beings are
creatures of habit, Descartes realizes that his cognitive revolution requires
more than the theoretical rejection of one source of belief and its replace-
ment with another. Equally fundamental is the problem of establishing
the correct habits of belief for a human being, so that he or she will not
be beset by the sorts of doubts that occasioned Descartes's inquiry in the
first place. The task of providing "something firm and secure in the sci-
Descartes's Mood 203
ences" thus requires that the human being retrain itself, make itself into
a being who uses the intellect as the source of its beliefs.
Descartes begins the development of his cognitive revolution with the
assertion that, in the normal course of affairs, the occurrence of a sensible
idea compels the mind to assent to the veracity of that idea, makes one
think that the world resembles the sensible idea that one has of it. Des-
cartes presents this belief as an unreflective habit that he had acquired
from nature. In the Third Meditation, while reflecting back upon the
course of the previous Meditations, Descartes makes the following claim:
"But I do not now deny that these [sensible] ideas are in me. However,
there was something else that I affirmed and that, because of my habit of
believing it, I thought was something I clearly perceived, but that, in fact,
I did not perceive-namely, that certain things are outside me, things
from which those ideas proceed and things to which they were entirely
similar. But on this point I was mistaken; or, if I judged truly, this judge-
ment did not result from the force of my perception" (1980, 68). In this
retrospective account of his first two Meditations, Descartes clearly states
that sense perception had given rise to an erroneous belief in him, 17
namely the belief that there are external objects that resemble the ideas
that he has received of them through the senses and that cause these
ideas. 18
Descartes sees the senses as holding sway over the human being's be-
liefs about reality with a force that he sees as akin to compulsion. Al-
though he begins by characterizing the senses as a source of knowledge
in neutral terms-"Whatever I had admitted until now as most true I
took in either from the senses or through the senses"-Descartes winds
up attributing to the senses a type of force-"When I say in this medita-
tion that I have been taught so by nature, I understand only that I am
driven by a spontaneous impulse to believing this position"-a force that
must be countered by the philosophic meditator if he or she is to achieve
access to the truth (1965, 57, 69; emphasis added).
To succeed in his cognitive revolution, then, Descartes has to break
the habitual force that such ideas have upon his beliefs. Indeed, the in-
tent of the First Meditation's method of doubt is precisely that of getting
the mind to reject the habitual press of the sensible ideas, of breaking the
"spontaneous impulse" to believe the reports of one's senses. 19 But it is in
the Third Meditation that Descartes explicitly characterizes himself ru
countering the compulsion that sensible ideas exert upon his mind sc
that intellectual ideas can emerge as elements of his meditative con·
 202 Descartes and Women
In order to understand the criticism of Descartes that I am now attrib-
uting to Elisabeth, we need to look more carefully at the argument of
the Meditations. In the Meditations, Descartes presents the central task of
philosophy as that of establishing certainty, of providing a firm founda-
tion for the sciences. He describes this task as necessary because many
uncertainties have crept into his beliefs, thus undermining the founda-
tions of the edifice of human knowledge: "Several years have now passed
since I first realized how many were the false opinions that in my youth I
took for true, and thus how doubtful were all the things that I subse-
quently built upon these opinions" ( 1980, 57). This problem dictates the
double program of the Meditations: of rejecting those beliefs that have
been weakened by the possibility of deception and of reestablishing belief
on a certain and indubitable foundation.
The specific means whereby Descartes proposes to effect this program
are the unseating of the senses as the source of truth about reality and
their replacement by the intellect. It thus makes sense to characterize the
project of the Meditations as that of bringing about a cognitive revolution,
in other words, a revolution in the faculty that a person uses to fix his or
her beliefs about reality.
I choose the term cognitive in order to indicate that Descartes posits
two components to this revolution. The first component is epistemic; it
requires the legitimation of the intellect rather than of the senses as the
appropriate faculty to use in determining the nature of reality. This re-
quires the legitimation of an epistemic principle based on the intellect
rather than the senses as that which can secure certainty.
However, Descartes does not think that his cognitive revolution is
simply an epistemic matter, something that can be settled by judging that
one epistemic principle of belief is superior to another. For the cognitive
revolution to be successful, the new source of belief must take over the
senses' role as the determiner of belief in the actual context of the per-
son's life. There is therefore a psychological aspect to Descartes's cognitive
revolution, an attempt to establish new habits of belief that will not be
plagued by doubts and uncertainties. Recognizing that human beings are
creatures of habit, Descartes realizes that his cognitive revolution requires
more than the theoretical rejection of one source of belief and its replace-
ment with another. Equally fundamental is the problem of establishing
the correct habits of belief for a human being, so that he or she will not
be beset by the sorts of doubts that occasioned Descartes's inquiry in the
first place. The task of providing "something firm and secure in the sci-
Descartes's Mood 203
ences" thus requires that the human being retrain itself, make itself into
a being who uses the intellect as the source of its beliefs.
Descartes begins the development of his cognitive revolution with the
assertion that, in the normal course of affairs, the occurrence of a sensible
idea compels the mind to assent to the veracity of that idea, makes one
think that the world resembles the sensible idea that one has of it. Des-
cartes presents this belief as an unreflective habit that he had acquired
from nature. In the Third Meditation, while reflecting back upon the
course of the previous Meditations, Descartes makes the following claim:
"But I do not now deny that these [sensible] ideas are in me. However,
there was something else that I affirmed and that, because of my habit of
believing it, I thought was something I clearly perceived, but that, in fact,
I did not perceive-namely, that certain things are outside me, things
from which those ideas proceed and things to which they were entirely
similar. But on this point I was mistaken; or, if I judged truly, this judge-
ment did not result from the force of my perception" (1980, 68). In this
retrospective account of his first two Meditations, Descartes clearly states
that sense perception had given rise to an erroneous belief in him, 17
namely the belief that there are external objects that resemble the ideas
that he has received of them through the senses and that cause these
ideas. 18
Descartes sees the senses as holding sway over the human being's be-
liefs about reality with a force that he sees as akin to compulsion. Al-
though he begins by characterizing the senses as a source of knowledge
in neutral terms-"Whatever I had admitted until now as most true I
took in either from the senses or through the senses"-Descartes winds
up attributing to the senses a type of force-"When I say in this medita-
tion that I have been taught so by nature, I understand only that I am
driven by a spontaneous impulse to believing this position"-a force that
must be countered by the philosophic meditator if he or she is to achieve
access to the truth (1965, 57, 69; emphasis added).
To succeed in his cognitive revolution, then, Descartes has to break
the habitual force that such ideas have upon his beliefs. Indeed, the in-
tent of the First Meditation's method of doubt is precisely that of getting
the mind to reject the habitual press of the sensible ideas, of breaking the
"spontaneous impulse" to believe the reports of one's senses. 19 But it is in
the Third Meditation that Descartes explicitly characterizes himself as
countering the compulsion that sensible ideas exert upon his mind so
that intellectual ideas can emerge as elements of his meditative con-
204 Descartes and Women
sciousness: "Now I will shut my eyes, I will stop up my ears, I will divert
all my senses, I will even blot out from my thoughts all images of corpo-
real things-or at least, since the latter can hardly be done, I will regard
these images as nothing, empty and false as indeed they are" (1980, 67).
It is worth emphasizing the contrived nature of the act of mental atten-
tion that Descartes describes in this passage, an act that seeks to keep
sensible ideas from being the primary objects of his consciousness. By
means of this strained act of attention, Descartes hopes to mute the ha-
bitual impact of the senses on his consciousness.
The result of such a sustained "withdraw[al] of the mind from the
senses" (Descartes 1980, 78) is, according to Descartes, the emergence of
a new set of ideas, those of the intellect, with a "clarity and distinctness"
that surpasses that of the ideas of sense. Descartes's claim is that, in the
proper sorts of circumstances, it is possible for the human being to get his
or her consciousness to dampen the press of sensible ideas upon itself so
that a set of rational ideas will emerge with a vigor and assertiveness that
exceeds that of the sensible ideas, at least within that specific context.
Creating the proper context within oneself for the emergence of these
rational ideas with all of their force is the key step in being a philosophic
meditator, for Descartes holds that these rational ideas are the keys to
truth. 20
Descartes thus believes that the meditating, philosophizing self places
itself in a very unusual state. In this state, its habitual tendency to believe
in the testimony of its senses, its desposition to take its sensible ideas to
be guides to the truth, is broken. Because of this alteration, a new set of
ideas emerges into the consciousness of such a self: intellectual ideas.
Descartes claims that these ideas, once they have emerged, have a power
that transcends that of the sensible ideas, compelling the assent of the
mind with a force that mirrors the force that sensible ideas previously
had. "I could not help judging that what I understood clearly is true; not
that I was coerced into holding this judgment because of some external
force, but because a great inclination of my will followed from a great
light in the intellect-so much so that the more spontaneously and freely
I believed it, the less I was indifferent to it" (1980, 82). Once intellectual
ideas have presented themselves to the meditating philosophic conscious-
ness with their own characteristic force, they are able to displace the
sensible ideas as the source of truth for the meditating philosopher.
But the issue for Descartes is not simply the epistemic justification of
the intellect, rather than the senses, as the appropriate faculty to use in
Descartes's Mood 205
determining the nature of reality; he is concerned to constitute the
human being as a being for whom the intellect is determinative, that is, a
being whose beliefs about reality come from the intellect. This latter task
is a demanding one for him. Throughout the Meditations, he repeatedly
returns to the difficulty of the task of paying sufficient attention to intel-
lectual ideas so as not to be deceived by the senses. For example, he
admits that he is not always able to keep intellectual ideas before his
mind with sufficient clarity not to be deceived about them: "Yet I am
indeed of such a nature that, while I perceive something very clearly and
distinctly, I cannot help but believe it to be true. And yet I am also of
such a nature that I cannot keep the gaze of my mind always on the same
thing in order to perceive it clearly" ( 1908, 88). Although Descartes goes
on to argue that memory allows him to solve this problem, such a solution
should not conceal the fact that becoming a being for whom the intellect
is determinative is a difficult task for him. He acknowledges that it takes
all sorts of special acts of attention for the human being to constitute
itself as a meditating philosopher for whom intellectual ideas actually
supplant sensible ideas as the source of truth.
The achievement of the Meditations-or at least their intended
achievement-is a cognitive revolution, the displacement of the senses
by the intellect. By means of the use of a specific cognitive practice
within a certain general context of detachment, Descartes claims to have
enabled the philosophic meditator to believe in intellectual ideas with
an intensity that supplants his or her habitual belief in the testimony of
the senses. If this attempt at a revolution is succcessful, the intellect will
have unseated the senses as the faculty that provides the philosophic
meditator with access to truth.
Descartes's acknowledgment of the contextuality of philosophic
thought, then, has developed into an account not only of the need for a
specific context within which to meditate, but also of the nature of the
practices necessary for meditating. Only within the consciousness of a
meditating self will intellectual ideas emerge with the clarity and dis-
tinctness that is necessary for them to play the determinative role in one's
thought. But just at the point where Descartes most fully acknowledges
the contextuality of philosophic thought, he goes on to deny that this
contextuality affects the products of philosophic thinking. For it is within
this context that Descartes believes himself to be able to describe the real
nature of the self. That is, he thinks that the real nature of the self is
revealed to the self in which the intellect is determinative.
206 Descartes and Women
As is well known, the self for Descartes is identical with the power of
thought and such a self is conjoined with the body to form a composite
whole. "I rightly conclude that my essence consists in this alone: that I
am a thing that thinks .... it is therefore certain that I am truly distinct
from my body, and that I can exist without it" (1980, 93 ). Descartes's
dualistic account of the self is a central result of his meditative method,
of the account of reality that the self that trusts the intellect articulates
for itself. It is this account of the human being that we have seen is the
explicit target of Elisabeth's criticism in her letter.·
There is a certain circularity to Descartes's claims. He claims that the
self can constitute itself as a self for which the intellect is determinative,
in other words, in which the intellect is the faculty used to determine the
truth about reality. This self finds in itself a rational faculty that allows it
access to reality. When gaining access to reality through this rational
faculty, this self comes to focus upon, among other things, its own nature.
It is therefore able to describe itself on the basis of the rational faculty
that it has constituted as authoritative within it.
This would suggest that the characterizations of reality determined by
the intellect would only hold true of "a person who seeks to know more
than the common crowd" (Descartes 1980, 66), that is, a person who
had constituted him or herself as one for whom the intellect was determi-
natie, and thus be contextualized as valid only for such persons. Could it
be that Descartes's failure to acknowledge this was the worry that moti-
vated Elisabeth's complaint to him?
Recall that Elisabeth complained to Descartes that "the interests of
[her] House" kept her from achieving the state of detachment necessary
for doing philosophy, so that she could not understand how it was possi-
ble for the mind and the body to interact. While Elisabeth explicitly
states that she does not understand how a mental substance can cause
motion in a physical one, I have shown that the grounds for her "lack of
understanding" might be something that she herself does not explicitly
suggest. Elisabeth could be saying that she had trouble understanding the
human being as a composite whole that is made up of two interacting
substances because she is a person whose own existence could not be
characterized in those terms. Descartes's view of the human being,
though perhaps reasonable for the isolated meditating philosopher, sit-
ting in his study with no acknowledged human attachments, might not
be reasonable for an active noblewoman whose social role cast her in the
task of having to mediate all sorts of "interests in [her] House." Though
Descartes's Mood 207
her own polite complaint is that these concerns keep her from seeing the
world through Descartes's eyes, perhaps she really was saying that seeing
the world through those eyes did violence to her own life. Perhaps the
"good student" was trying to get her famous teacher to see that the world
he saw was neither the world as it was nor the world she inhabited, but
the world that he had created by pursuing the very reflections from which
that world first emerged.
IV
What exactly is Elisabeth's criticism of Descartes's account of the nature
of the human being on the interpretation that I have been developing?
Most fundamentally, the problem is that Descartes has mistaken the con-
ditions for the production of his own thought with the conditions of
human existence in generaL As a result, the picture that he gives of the
ontological structure of the human being-that of being a mind or soul
that is part of a larger composite that includes a specific physical body,
"my" body-characterizes certain features of the state of the self that
makes philosophic reflection possible. One has to abstract oneself from
the pull of one's desires if one is to philosophize, but this does not mean
that one is really a creature to whom such desires present themselves as
simply ideas. One constitutes oneself as such a being within the context
of being a philosophic meditator. Descartes makes the constituting act of
the self transparent, a difference that makes no difference, something that
can be "seen through" to the actual nature of the self.
To establish the plausibility of this criticism, it is necessary to consider
more fully the context for philosophic meditation that Descartes has de-
scribed. He has freed himself from all cares. He has removed himself from
the hustle and bustle of city life. He is by himself in his study. (It is worth
asking whether he requires a servant to light his fire and prepare his food.
How does his failure to acknowledge this dependency condition his own
sense of autonomous existence?) He has tried to keep his mind from
focusing upon the information conveyed to him by his senses, attempting
to allow ideas of the intellect to be the primary contents of his conscious-
ness. He then treats this self as if its contents represent the truth about
human beings, what they are really like. That is, he allows the self that
 208 Descartes and Women
he has constituted to become the measure of what it is to be human and
what the human may know with certainty.
But notice what has happened. He has constituted a self that is able
to meditate philosophically, that is, a self that exists in a context in
which philosophic thinking can take place. As we have seen, Descartes
himself recognizes that this is a very special sort of context, one that
requires a great deal of effort to attain, so that the philosophic meditator
not be distracted from his meditative task. Descartes treats the context
as transparent, that is, he ignores the effect that the meditative practices
he employs have on the content of that which becomes present to his
consciousness. He treats the context as one that allows what is real to
emerge. But this requires that he decontextualize the contents that
emerge, that is, treat them as normative for the being of the human
being.
Within the context that Descartes creates by his withdrawal, it may
even be legitimate to think of the human mind as a representer of reality.
That is, within certain specified circumstances and for certain specific
purposes, it may be useful to raise the question of how a human being is
best able to gain knowledge of reality. What Elisabeth questions, how-
ever, is generalizing the answers to this specific question into an ontologi-
cal account of the nature of the human being. If we think that
representing the truth is the role of the human being, there is a certain
plausibility to thinking of ourselves as minds, that is, as privileging the
mental as a realm within which such representation takes place. Indeed,
once the intellect has replaced the senses as the source of our represent-
ing ideas, it might even make sense to identify ourselves with our minds
and to treat our bodies as unnecessary to an account of representationY
But such plausibility makes sense only within a limited human context,
the context of removed thought that Descartes describes in the Medita-
tions.ll
Descartes's acknowledgment of the importance of context thus breaks
off at a critical point. He accepts both the idea that there are certain
circumstances that are necessary for a person's being able to meditate
philosophically-namely the absence of those concerns that could divert
one's attention from the philosophic task-as well as the idea that philo-
sophic meditation itself requires specific intellectual acts of attention.
Despite these recognitions of context, Descartes does not believe that
the fact that the person engaged in philosophic activity manifests specific
characteristics as a result of that engagement affects the universality of
Descartes's Mood 209
the claims made within such a context. That is, Descartes does not admit
that the fact of the contextuality of philosophic meditation entails a
further contextualization, namely a contextualization of the claims made
by the philosophic meditator himself.
Instead, Descartes maintains that the character of reality that is re-
vealed to a self that has placed itself in such a state is the character of
the world as it really is. In so doing, Descartes has fallen victim to one of
the oldest of Western philosophical conceits: that being a philosopher
realizes the human essence. In terms less straightforward than Plato and
Aristotle-for whom the philosophic life was indeed the only truly
human life-Descartes once again has inscribed the philosopher as the
measure of being human. He has done so not just by claiming that philo-
sophic activity is the appropriate stance from which to judge the validity
of certain practices, but by treating the self that is engaged in philosophic
activity as the true self, as the self that underlies all human activities,
rather than as a particular self that is tied to that activity. Such a claim
is made plausible by viewing as transparent-in other words, as not af-
fecting the outcome-the constituting nature of the practice that results
in the view of the world that Descartes seeks to articulate. His confusion
rests on treating the philosophizing human being as if it constituted the
most basic nature of the human being in any context, rather than ac-
knowledging the contextuality of such a human appearance. Descartes
fails to see that the act of philosophizing produces, rather than reveals,
the res cogitans.
The problem is that, in taking the result of this reflection on the na-
ture of the self that has placed itself in the position to meditate philo-
sophically to characterize the nature of the human being, Descartes has
ignored the importance of the fact that the self about which he is reflect-
ing is a self that has been placed in a very special state by means of a very
specific set of circumstances and practices. These include the very ones
that he has himself enumerated at the outset of the Meditations, but they
also include the particular sort of attention through which he has consti-
tuted himself as able to perceive intellectual ideas clearly and distinctly.
Or, rather, he ignores these facts about the self because he believes that
the nature of the self that he finds through philosophic meditation is the
nature of the self itself, the self as it really is.
But as Elisabeth made clear in her response to Descartes's claims, such
a view of the self does not carry conviction for one whose life is lived in
circumstances fundamentally different from those required for philo-
 210 Descartes and Women
sophie thought. By failing to acknowledge the contextuality of his own
thought, Descartes thus denies the insight about philosophy that he had
begun to develop: that it is a specific sort of activity that comes into
existence as the result of the reign of a special set of circumstances, for
he does not believe that the self that he discovered had been constituted
by the very activity it was performing. It is this more contextualized un-
derstanding of philosophy that I have found implicit in Elisabeth's letter
to the great philosopher and that creates an important link between her
and the insights of many contemporary feminist theorists. 23
Notes
1. The letrer is dated June 10-20, 1643.
2. Descartes introduces this analogy in his letter of May 21, 1643 (1969, 274-76).
3. Descartes justifies his move to the country as being due to the amount of time that has
passed since he had resolved to inspect his beliefs fully and compehensively.
4. For this chapter, I must bypass the issue of the relationship between Descartes, the author of
the Meditations, and the textual narrator, who is usually taken to be Descartes. The rhetorical force
of the Meditations requires distinguishing between these two.
5. Spinoza's philosophy, for example, can be seen as constituted by the attempt to retain Des-
cartes's rationalism while solving this very problem of mind-body interaction by denying that the
mind and the body are separate substances.
6. It is also worth noting that Descartes plays the role of a spiritual counselor to Elisabeth, a
fact that further conditions her deference.
7. In raising this issue, I have focused upon the self-understandings of the two correspondents.
But even if Elisabeth had thought of herself as a student of Descartes, we might reject the validity of
her self-understanding, claiming that the prejudices of her time made her unable to see herself in
other terms; I do not discuss this possibility explicitly.
8. It should be noted that, despite the detailed explanation of how the passions are formed,
this work does not directly address the metaphysical problem of how an immaterial substance can
have material effects, the problem raised by Elisabeth in the correspondence.
9· There are a number of works that are questioning different aspects of the Western tradition.
For example, Martin Bernal (1987) opens the issue of the non-Western roots of Western culture.
The present issue can be seen as offering a related suggestion. Of course, the extent to which there
has really been an exclusion is itself the issue l am addressing.
10. Feminist scholars are involved in the project of uncovering and publicizing such contribu-
tions. Beatrice H. Zedler (1989) includes a discussion of Elisabeth's correspondence with Descartes.
One of my points is that there needs to be greater theoretical sophistication is such attempts. For
example, Zedler's statement, "In responding to Elisabeth's questions he [Descartes] knew he was not
confronting an adversary who wanted to prove him wrong, but a friend who was frankly telling him
where she needed help to understand and accept what he said" (40) fails to discuss the implications
of the discursive script that Descartes and Elisabeth adopt.
11. Despite other disagreements, many feminist theorists have embraced the thesis of the con-
Descartes's Mood 211
textuality of philosophic thought. See, for example, Mary Field Belenky et al. (1986), Sandra Har-
ding (1991), Nancy Hartsock (1983), and Sarah Ruddick (1989).
12. Of course, this view does not distinguish philosophical reflection from many other forms of
theoretical activity. Nonetheless, it is important for philosophers to recogize this fact.
13. This view stems from Aristotle's account of thought, one that is modeled on his account of
perception, in De Anima. It is focused on the content of thought and not its form. Even reflection is
treated as an internal version of the perception of objects. It is worth noting that both Plato and
Aristotle acknowledged the importance of achieving an appropriate state of mind for philosophic
thinking to be possible.
14. Though human beings may be deficient in one or more sense, it is not clear in what sense a
biological member of the species Homo sapeins with no senses whatsoever would be human.
15. I am referring, of course, to Virginia Woolf's famous demand that "a woman must have
money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction" (1928, 6). For an eloquent exploration of
this and other issues, see Tillie Olsen (1978).
16. This language establishes a point of contact between my reading and those of Derrida. It
also establishes a link with Tillie Olsen's effort to turn silences into speech.
17. Strictly speaking, as he points out, he is not committed to the erroneous nature of the belief,
but only to its distinction from the belief in the (objective) reality of the idea itself.
18. It is important to distinguish Descartes's claim that the senses are the faculty that determine
truth from the representational model with which be operates. Although Descartes's cognitive revo-
lution challenges the legitimacy of using the senses as guides to the truth, it never challenges the
representational model. Indeed, throughout his meditations, Descartes seeks to legitimate the repre-
sentational model, to find a faculty that will provide the mind with ideas that do have a guaranteed
"hook" onto reality. His intellectual revolution will succeed only if he can replace the senses with
another faculty while still retaining the representational model itself.
19. For an insightful account of this aspect of Descartes's thought, see Gary Hatfield (1986).
20. The interlocking of truth and power in Descartes's thought has not been explored, to my
knowledge. It asserts that ideas exert power over our will (and, hence, our beliefs) in a manner that
most modern commentators on Descartes neglect. Spinoza seems to have taken this aspect of Des-
cartes's philosophy very seriously.
21. It also might not make sense, for this would deny the human being a particular location in
its account of reality. Merleau Ponty (1962) discusses this issue at length.
22. The suggestions that I am making here bears a certain resemblance to Heidegger's claim
that the representational model of the mind occurred only within contexts of "breakdown," when
objects with which one was concerned were not able to be fit into the context of one's concern with
them (1962). One of the fundamental errors ofWestem thought, according to Heidegger, was that
of decontextualizing that representational model from its proper context. My account makes a simi-
lar point. Descartes's ontologizing of the contents of the consciousness of the meditating self suc-
ceeds only by denying the importance of the context in constituting the contents of that self.
23. I would like to thank John Carriero, Dian Farquhar, Cynthia Freeland, Gareth Matthews,
Eileen O'Neill, Amelie Rorty, Alan Schiffmann, and the members of the Propositional Attitudes
Task Force for their helpful criticisms of earlier versions of this essay. All of them have helped me
better understand my own argument.
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