Descartes: A Biography

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Descartes and Princess Elizabeth 

The first is to try always to use one’s mind, as much as possible, to discover what

should be done or not done in all life’s situations.

The second is to have a firm and constant resolution to implement whatever reason

recommends without being diverted by passions or desires....

The third is to keep in mind that, while acting in this way according to reason,

as much as possible, all the goods that are not possessed are completely and equally

outside one’s power, and in this way one gets used to not desiring them. (iv.–)

Descartes concludes that ‘the greatest human happiness consists in the

right use of reason’ (iv.), and that Seneca should have taught the

principal truths required to practise virtue and to control desires and

passions.

Elizabeth might have been consoled by the length of Descartes’ letters

and the detailed instructions that he provided. However, she was not

convinced by the basic ideas on which his morality depended. She objected

that some bodily indispositions are such that they compromise the very

application of reason on which the Cartesian rules depend.

I still cannot rid myself of doubt about whether one can realize the happiness about

which you speak without the assistance of what does not depend completely on the will.

There are illnesses that take away completely the ability to reason and, consequently,

the ability to enjoy a rational satisfaction. There are others that reduce our strength

and prevent us from following the maxims which sound judgment has formulated, and

which leave the most moderate person subject to being carried away by their passions

and less capable of extricating themselves from the accidents of fortune, which requires

afirmresolution. (iv.)

Elizabeth gives as an example the fact that she had spent the previous eight

days in the company of her sick brother, trying to persuade him to follow

the doctor’s advice and hoping to comfort him by her presence. During

that time, she could not concentrate enough even to write a response to

Descartes. Bodily indispositions, she concluded, do indeed inhibit the

functioning of reason.

Before this reply from Elizabeth arrived in Egmond, Descartes con-

tinued writing his intermmitent commentary on Seneca. He repeated

the advice he offered as the second maxim of morality in Part III of the

Discourse on Method, that, in practical matters, one should follow the best

advice available without waiting for certainty. ‘One satisfies one’s con-

science and is assured that one’s views about morality are the best

available...as long as one takes care to get advice from the most capable

people and to use all one’s mental powers to examine what one should do’