Elisabetta di Boemia: variazioni antropotecniche sul dualismo cartesiano

This paper offers an anthropotechnic reading of the correspondence between Descartes and Elizabeth of Bohemia. Elizabeth places the question of cartesian dualism in an «ascetic» perspective (in the etymological sense of the term): understanding how mind and body interact serves to overcome one’s passions and heal from melancholy. Cartesianism is thus, for Elizabeth, a kind of philosophy of exercise, an inner disposition to be interpreted. The princess takes up the gesture of ancient therapeutics in which philosophy and «bios» are closely connected, giving it, however, an original psychological bent. The exercise cannot, in fact, be separated from the singularity in which it is placed. It will be shown how, with her way of assuming the cartesian attitude, Elizabeth makes an important contribution not only to the development of Descartes’ theory of passions but, more generally, to the rethinking of philosophy from a new therapeutic perspective.