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Death in Sweden

A man born in the gardens of Touraine...cannot easily leave this country

[the United Provinces] to go and live in a country of bears, among the rocks and

the ice. (April)

I

is difficult to know why Descartes ever went to Sweden. One possible

reason is that he could not resist the temptation of being honoured by

Queen Christina, and that he was led to a premature death by vanity. Had

he been asked directly, he would hardly have accepted that interpretation

of events. He might have argued instead that he was predestined to die

in Sweden and that it was impossible for him to avoid his fate. These

twin themes, of destiny and the passions, were among the subjects of

his philosophical reflections during the summer of, when he was

struggling with competing desires of unequal strength – a dominant desire

to remain in Egmond, and a reluctant willingness to travel to Stockholm.

During those months, Descartes was editing thePassions of the Soul

and was drafting the material that appeared in the final part of that book.

One of the topics that arose naturally in that context was the influence of

fortune in human lives. He had nothing but contempt for the suggestion

that there is some kind of world power called ‘fortune’ that determines our

fateand over which we have no influence. He wrote in thePassions: ‘The

common opinion that there is a fortune which is external to us, and which

determines as it wishes what events happen or do not happen, should be

rejected completely’ (xi.). Such a ‘power’ was one of those mysterious

scholastic entities against which he had argued for almost two decades. He

suggested instead that a Christian philosopher should accept the universal

influence of divine Providence. However, this Providence was also bound

to appear, from the perspective of human beings, as an equally immutable

fate. According to Descartes, we have no way of knowing what God has

