Does Anne Conway (1631–79) hold that the created world consists of a single underlying substance? Some have argued that she does; others have argued that she is a priority monist and so holds that there are many created substances, but the whole created world is ontologically prior to each particular creature. Against both of these proposals, this article makes the case for a substance pluralist interpretation of Conway: individual creatures are distinct substances, and the whole created world is not ontologically (...) prior to the individual creatures that compose it. The basic argument for such a view draws on Conway's claims about the freedom and moral responsibility of individual creatures. The pluralist reading is straightforwardly compatible with these claims, while the monistic readings are not. (shrink)

Conway characterizes freedom in apparently contradictory ways. She describes God as the most free, yet he is necessitated to act perfectly due to his wisdom and goodness. Created beings, by contrast, sin. They are not necessitated to do so. This suggests that Conway has a binary account of freedom: divine freedom is a matter of being necessitated by wisdom and goodness, whereas creaturely freedom consists in indifference, understood as a power to act, or not act. Despite the apparently conflicting remarks, (...) I argue that Conway has a single account of freedom as spontaneity. Conway defines spontaneity in terms of causing one’s own action independent of external causes. I suggest that spontaneity is more precisely understood as an intrinsic power aimed at the good in Conway’s metaphysics, and that this account of freedom can combine necessity and contingency. Rather than a binary, Conway offers an account of freedom in creation that has it on a continuum with divine freedom. (shrink)

Feminist work in the history of philosophy has been going on for several decades. Some scholars have focused on the ways philosophical concepts are themselves gendered. Others have recovered women writers who were well known in their own time but forgotten in ours, while still others have firmly placed into a philosophical context the works of women writers long celebrated within other disciplines in the humanities. The recovery of women writers has challenged the myth that there are no women in (...) the history of philosophy, but it has not eradicated it. What, we may ask, is impeding our progress? This paper argues that so often we treat early modern women philosophers’ texts in ways that are different from, or inconsistent with, the explicit commitments of the analytic tradition, and in so doing, we may be triggering our audiences to reject these women as philosophers, and their texts as philosophical. Moreover, this is the case despite our intention to achieve precisely the opposite effect. (shrink)

One of the most basic questions an ontology can address is: How many things, or substances, are there? A monist will say, ‘just one’. But there are different stripes of monism, and where the borders between these different views lie rests on the question, ‘To what does this “oneness” apply?’ Some monists apply ‘oneness’ to existence. Others apply ‘oneness’ to types. Determining whether a philosopher is a monist and deciphering what this is supposed to mean is no easy task, especially (...) when it comes to those writing in the early modern period because many philosophers of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries include God in their ontologies. InThe Principles,Anne Finch Conway offers an ontology that is often described as being both ‘vitalist’ and ‘monist’. I take this to mean that, for Conway, all that exists is in some way alive and that if asked ‘How many things, or substances, are there?’ Conway would say, ‘Just one’. But to what does this ‘oneness’ apply? And where does the point of disagreement between Conway and her interlocutors, Hobbes, Spinoza, More, and Descartes lie? In this paper, I argue that determining the answer to this first question turns out to be quite difficult. Nevertheless, we can still make sense of the second. (shrink)

Anne Conway (1631–1679) is often described as a vitalist. Scholars typically take this to mean that Conway considers life to be ubiquitous throughout the world. While Conway is indeed a vitalist in this sense, I argue that she is also committed to a stronger view: namely, the panpsychist view that mental capacities are ubiquitous and fundamental in creation. Reading Conway as a panpsychist highlights several aspects of her philosophy that deserve further attention, especially her accounts of emanative causation and universal (...) perfectibility. There are also historical benefits to interpreting Conway as a panpsychist. Through its history, ‘vitalism’ has often been used to describe philosophies that draw a sharp line between living and non-living nature; surely, Conway is not a vitalist in this way. Moreover, some of Conway’s contemporaries (for instance, Ralph Cudworth and Henry More) are sometimes regarded as vitalists, but were not panpsychists. It is important to distinguish between Conway’s vitalism and her version of panpsychism and to add a term like ‘panpsychism’ to the interpretive lexicon. Otherwise, we run the risk of undervaluing Conway’s originality within her own context and beyond. (shrink)

The Aristotelian account of change—according to which no individual can survive a change of species because an individual's essence is, at least in part, determined by its species membership—remains popular in the seventeenth century. One important, but often overlooked dissenting voice comes from Anne Conway. Unlike many of her contemporaries, Conway firmly rejects the Aristotelian account of change. She instead endorses the doctrine of Radical Mutability, the view that a creature can belong to different species at different times. A horse, (...) for example, can gradually become a human being and yet remain the same individual. Why, though, is Conway so opposed to the prima facie appealing Aristotelian account of change? This paper claims that she levels two arguments against this account which have been largely neglected so far. First, she argues that there could be no causal interaction between creatures belonging to different species with distinct essences, because cause and effect would be too dissimilar in that case. Second, Conway argues that the Aristotelian model is inconsistent with divine goodness because it allows for the annihilation of creatures and because it imposes arbitrary restrictions on the capacity of creatures to improve. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis paper seeks to shed light on the often-overlooked account of divine and human freedom presented by Anne Conway in her Principles of the Most Ancient Modern Philosophy, partly through a...

In chapter IX of the Principles, Anne Conway claims that her metaphysics is diametrically opposed to those of Descartes and Spinoza. Scholars have analyzed her rejection of Cartesianism, but not her critique of Spinoza. This paper proposes that two central points of Conway’s metaphysics can be understood as direct responses to Spinoza: (1) the relation between God, Christ, and the creatures in the tripartite division of being, and (2) the individuation of beings in the lowest species. I will argue that (...) Conway, in criticizing Spinoza’s identification between God and nature, defends a paradoxical monism, and that her concept of individuation is a reductio ad absurdum of Spinoza’s criterion of identity in the individuation of finite modes. (shrink)

Anne Conway argues that all substances are spiritual. Yet, she also claims that all created substance has some type of body. Peter Loptson has argued that Conway didn’t carefully consider her view that all created beings have bodies for it seems God could have created only disembodied spirits. There are several reasons to think Loptson is right. First, Conway holds that God is all‐good and will do the best for his creation. She also holds that spirit is better than body. (...) So, how is it that creatures always have bodies? Second, although she maintains that incorporation is punishment for sin, Conway holds that some creatures can fall without acquiring visible corporality. I argue that when we examine these views more closely, we will see that not only did Conway give them careful consideration, but that there is no inconsistency. Finally, I show that Conway’s views concerning the nature and function of body provides further evidence of her carefully crafted system. Conway holds that bodies play an important role in a finite beings’ ability to change and interact with others. Even more surprising is Conway’s view that the body is the repository of thoughts, memories, and knowledge. (shrink)