Descartes: A Biography

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 Descartes: A Biography

of plants, she wanted to visit Egmond and hear about the truths that

Descartes was discovering in his ‘new garden’, but she was prevented

from doing so by ‘the malediction of my sex’.

Seneca:The Happy Life

Descartes decided suddenly, in July,tooffer Elizabeth a guided

reading of a book entitledThe Happy Lifebythe Roman philosopher

Seneca (d. ..).The objective was to get her to meditate on ‘the

means by which philosophy teaches us to realize the supreme happiness

that common souls vainly expect from fortune and which can be acquired

only from within ourselves’ (iv.). It might seem strange that such a

consistent critic of the ancients would revert to these philosophers as a

source of wisdom, even with the qualification that he would ‘try to advance

beyond them by adding something to their rules’ (iv.). He was careful

to point out that Seneca was ‘not enlightened by religious faith and had

only natural reason as a guide’ (iv.).

Once this plan was agreed upon, both correspondents seem to have

read Seneca and exchanged comments about his philosophy of the good

life. Descartes emphasized that happiness is ultimately ‘a perfect content-

ment of the mind and an inner satisfaction’ (iv.). This might imply

that misfortune is irrelevant to happiness, or that those who are mentally

strong could ignore misfortune and achieve this inner happiness despite

what happens to them. Such a view exaggerated the insignificance of for-

tune. Accordingly, Descartes qualified the apparently na ̈ıve view he had

proposed by acknowledging that there are two kinds of thing that make

us happy: those that depend on ourselves, such as virtue and wisdom,

and those that depend on good fortune, such as health, riches, and so on.

However, if two people are equally virtuous and wise, then the one who

enjoys good health and wealth could enjoy a more perfect contentment

than the other. Despite this concession, Descartes wished to argue for the

relativity of contentment to the needs of individuals, so that ‘the poorest

people and those who are least blessed by fortune or nature’ (iv.–) are

capable of being completely content and satisfied.

Descartes then offers three rules to guide people toward inner content-

ment, independent of the effects of external factors such as wealth, health,

and social status, which are reminiscent of the three rules of morality pro-

posed in theDiscourse on Method.