Search results for "mind-body interaction"

Elisabeth on Free Will, Preordination, and Philosophical Doubt

2021

Elisabeth is widely known as a critic of René Descartes' account of mind--body interaction and scholarly interpretations of her view on the will most often pose the question about the freedom of the will in relation to bodily impulses such as the passions. This chapter takes a different perspective and focuses on the problem of the compatibility of free will and providence, as it is discussed in a sequence of six letters that Elisabeth and Descartes wrote between September 1645 and January 1646. The chapter focuses on this specific metaphysical problem in order to ask what Elisabeth's remarks on the topic can tell about her general philosophical method as well as about her particular philos…