Character
"In a book about their relationship, Leon Petit claims that Descartes and Elisabeth were in love with one another . Genevieve Rodis-Lewis is inclined to agree, though in her opinion it was not a sexual passion."
In her correspondence with Descartes she poses one of the most critical questions regarding his philosophy of Dualism - which states that mind and body are separate entities - namely that if mind and body are two separate entities then how do they interact with each other? Descartes never provided a satisfying answer to this question.
She is described as a woman of utmost intelligence speaking six languages and having an aptitude for mathematics and art. Additionally, she was a very gifted painter, among her other talents.
Read more about this topic: Elisabeth Of The Palatinate
Famous quotes containing the word character:
“Even in harmonious families there is this double life: the group life, which is the one we can observe in our neighbour’s household, and, underneath, another—secret and passionate and intense—which is the real life that stamps the faces and gives character to the voices of our friends. Always in his mind each member of these social units is escaping, running away, trying to break the net which circumstances and his own affections have woven about him.”
—Willa Cather (1873–1947)
“But the mark of American merit in painting, in sculpture, in poetry, in fiction, in eloquence, seems to be a certain grace without grandeur, and itself not new but derivative; a vase of fair outline, but empty,—which whoso sees, may fill with what wit and character is in him, but which does not, like the charged cloud, overflow with terrible beauty, and emit lightnings on all beholders.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“But boys and girls, pale from the imagined love
Of solitary beds, knew what they were,
That passion could bring character enough
And pressed at midnighht in some public place
Live lips upon a plummet-measured face.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)