RENÉ DESCARTES AND CHRISTINA OF SWEDEN: OBSESSION WITH REASON AND PASSION FOR SOVEREIGNTY

Abstract

The article describes and comments on a number of epistolary documents pertaining to the last journey of René Descartes and specifically to his enigmatic relations with Queen Christina. Those relations were conducted at first as a kind of “epistolary novel” and may be regarded as one of the examples of a dialogue between a thinker and a ruler. As the historical tradition clearly indicates, the relationship ended in a radical rift between power and philosophy. It is important for us to understand why Descartes, who had shunned all the temptations of power throughout his life, so recklessly succumbed to the charms of the “northern Minerva” and agreed to assume the role of court philosopher even though his whole way of life, as well as his philosophy, argued against such a choice. The author traces out a series of hypotheses. First, what was dominant in the relationship between Descartes and Christina was not so much the mostly rational framework of a “philosopher” encountering a “sovereign” but a sort of confrontation between two obsessions: the thinker’s arrogant trust in the omnipotence of an absolute reason that nevertheless had its blind spots, and the untrammelled will of sovereign power on which the young queen based her existence. Second, turning to some of the themes in Descartes’ own philosophical thought and in particular to the “malin génie” from Meditations on First Philosophy (1641), one may infer that this rather literary or even poetic figure at some point took the form of a kind of “femme fatale” that preoccupied the philosopher’s thinking and filled his life with an existential turmoil which contributed to his fatal decision to go to Sweden. The ultimate conclusion is that the “Souverain Bien” for the philosopher was the rare opportunity for his thinking to reign supreme; but by succumbing to the temptation to serve the Empress, he betrayed himself. The “souverain Bien” for the ruler lay in autocracy as such, and specifically in a devotion to herself as the embodiment of the administration of power.