The Electress Sophie (usually spelt ‘Sophia’ in English) was the daughter of Queen Elizabeth of Bohemia, who was the daughter of James I of England. Sophie’s sister, Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia, corresponded with Descartes. Sophie was the wife of Ernst August, first Duke, and then Elector of Hanover.

When it was decided that the successor to Queen Anne as the English sovereign would have to be a Protestant, Sophie became the heir apparent. However, she died just before Anne, and so her son Georg Ludwig, who had become Elector on his father’s death, became King George I of England in 1714.

Leibniz had a very close (but Platonic) relationship with Sophie, and he regularly corresponded with her on his many absences from Hanover. He was devastated by her death, which took place two years before he himself died.

Sophie (like so many other aristocratic women of the time) was keenly interested in philosophy. None of them had any formal training in scholastic philosophy — but that was hardly a disadvantage, since modern philosophy was premised on a rejection of scholasticism. Much of the correspondence between Leibniz and Sophie is taken up with philosophical issues — as is also true of his correspondence with a number of other aristocratic women.

Although Leibniz’s style was very different from his style when writing to male academics, I don’t think he was condescending to women as women. It is more that he was writing to non-academics with no background in scholastic philosophy, and he was writing in vernacular French rather than in stilted Latin. The only special feature I can detect is that he has a greater tendency to give examples and analogies, and he sometimes makes allusions to popular literature.

I have translated extracts from two of Leibniz’s letters to Sophie, which give an exceptionally clear account of his philosophy as a whole, but with special reference to infinite divisibility, and to the nature of the soul. The second extract is remarkably similar to the Monadology, written eight years later.

I have translated from Gerhardt’s Philosophischen Schriften, Vol. 7.

Go to Index to Leibniz’s correspondence with Sophie