Abstract

The correspondence between Descartes and Elisabeth contains the analysis of different female bodies: that of Elisabeth, that of Descartes’ mother, and that of the pregnant woman. The study of their appearances shows that the idea of a weak sex is not Cartesian. For Elisabeth, the idea has a certain validity at first, but the exercise of philosophy, her discussions with Descartes as a doctor of both the soul and the body, allow the patient Elisabeth to recover all her strength. She becomes the symbolic incarnation not of the new philosophy but of an essential thesis of that philosophy according to which scholars are not the true sages. Behind the description of a body and a sensitive and sometimes sick soul, the correspondence also, and above all, allows to see the expression of a very powerful faculty of reasoning.