ABSTRACT
In theory, friendship was a male prerogative and pleasure in early modern Europe. Aristotle only considered the possibility of cross-gender friendship within marriage, a relation characterized by inequality and utility. Only in spiritual milieux promoting a counter-cultural ethos modelled on the ideals of early Christianity were cross-gender friendships recognized and celebrated. The correspondence of Rene Descartes and Elisabeth of Bohemia was remarkable specifically because it constructed a philosophical friendship between a man and a woman. The letters of Descartes and Elisabeth exemplify a practice of equality, characterized by a balancing and counterbalancing of equalizing gestures. Descartes remained loyal both to Elisabeth and to a vision of friendship in which a sage is the friend of all other sages without knowing them. Descarte's and Elisabeth's respective practices of equality had implications for the larger polity, insofar as they help reconstruct contemporary possibilities for female emancipation and constraints on it.
