Anne Conway (also known as Viscountess Conway; ''
née'' Finch; 14 December 1631 – 23 February 1679) was an English
philosopher whose work, in the tradition of the
Cambridge Platonists
The Cambridge Platonists were an influential group of Platonist philosophers and Christian theologians at the University of Cambridge that existed during the 17th century. The leading figures were Ralph Cudworth and Henry More.
Group and its na ...
, was an influence on
Gottfried Leibniz
Gottfried Wilhelm (von) Leibniz . ( – 14 November 1716) was a German polymath active as a mathematician, philosopher, scientist and diplomat. He is one of the most prominent figures in both the history of philosophy and the history of mathem ...
. Conway's thought is a deeply original form of
rationalist philosophy, with hallmarks of
gynocentric concerns and patterns that lead some to think of it as unique among seventeenth-century systems.
Biography
Anne Finch was born to
Sir Heneage Finch (who had held the posts of the
Recorder of London
The Recorder of London is an ancient legal office in the City of London. The Recorder of London is the senior circuit judge at the Central Criminal Court (the Old Bailey), hearing trials of criminal offences. The Recorder is appointed by the Cr ...
and
Speaker of the House of Commons Speaker of the House of Commons is a political leadership position found in countries that have a House of Commons, where the membership of the body elects a speaker to lead its proceedings.
Systems that have such a position include:
* Speaker of ...
under
Charles I Charles I may refer to:
Kings and emperors
* Charlemagne (742–814), numbered Charles I in the lists of Holy Roman Emperors and French kings
* Charles I of Anjou (1226–1285), also king of Albania, Jerusalem, Naples and Sicily
* Charles I of ...
) and his second wife, Elizabeth (daughter of William Cradock of Staffordshire). Her father died the week before her birth. She was the youngest child.
Her early education was by tutors and included
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
, to which she later added
Greek
Greek may refer to:
Greece
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group.
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family.
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
and
Hebrew
Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...
. Her half-brother,
John Finch, who encouraged her interests in
philosophy and
theology
Theology is the systematic study of the nature of the divine and, more broadly, of religious belief. It is taught as an academic discipline, typically in universities and seminaries. It occupies itself with the unique content of analyzing the ...
, introduced Anne to the Cambridge Platonist
Henry More
Henry More (; 12 October 1614 – 1 September 1687) was an English philosopher of the Cambridge Platonist school.
Biography
Henry was born in Grantham, Lincolnshire on 12 October 1614. He was the seventh son of Alexander More, mayor of Gran ...
, who was one of John's tutors at
Christ's College, Cambridge. This led to a lifelong correspondence and close friendship between them on the subject of
René Descartes
René Descartes ( or ; ; Latinized: Renatus Cartesius; 31 March 1596 – 11 February 1650) was a French philosopher, scientist, and mathematician, widely considered a seminal figure in the emergence of modern philosophy and science. Ma ...
' philosophy, over the course of which Anne grew from More's informal pupil to his
intellectual
An intellectual is a person who engages in critical thinking, research, and reflection about the reality of society, and who proposes solutions for the normative problems of society. Coming from the world of culture, either as a creator or a ...
equal. More said of her that he had "scarce ever met with any Person, Man or Woman, of better Natural parts than Lady Conway" (quoted in Richard Ward's ''The Life of Henry More'' (1710) p. 193), and that "in the knowledge of things as well Natural and Divine, you have not onely out-gone all of your own Sex, but even of that other also." Conway grew up in the house now known as
Kensington Palace, which her family owned at the time.
In 1651, she married
Edward Conway, later 1st
Earl of Conway, and in the following year More dedicated his book ''Antidote against Atheism'' to her. In 1658, Anne gave birth to her only child, Heneage Edward Conway, who died of
smallpox
Smallpox was an infectious disease caused by variola virus (often called smallpox virus) which belongs to the genus Orthopoxvirus. The last naturally occurring case was diagnosed in October 1977, and the World Health Organization (WHO) c ...
just two years later. Her husband was also interested in philosophy and had himself been tutored by More, but she went far beyond him in both the depth of her thought and the variety of her interests. She became interested in the
Lurianic Kabbalah
Lurianic Kabbalah is a school of kabbalah named after Isaac Luria (1534–1572), the Jewish rabbi who developed it. Lurianic Kabbalah gave a seminal new account of Kabbalistic thought that its followers synthesised with, and read into, the earlie ...
, and then in
Quakerism, to which she converted in 1677. In England at that time the Quakers were generally disliked and feared, and suffered persecution and even imprisonment. Conway's decision to convert, to make her house a centre for Quaker activity, and to proselytise actively was thus particularly bold and courageous.
Her life from the age of twelve (when she suffered a period of fever) was marked by the recurrence of severe
migraines. These meant that she was often incapacitated by pain, and she spent much time under medical supervision and searching for a cure (at one point even having her
jugular vein
The jugular veins are veins that take deoxygenated blood from the head back to the heart via the superior vena cava. The internal jugular vein descends next to the internal carotid artery and continues posteriorly to the sternocleidomastoid mu ...
s opened). She had medical advice from Dr.
Thomas Willis
Thomas Willis FRS (27 January 1621 – 11 November 1675) was an English doctor who played an important part in the history of anatomy, neurology and psychiatry, and was a founding member of the Royal Society.
Life
Willis was born on his pare ...
. Conway was famously treated by many of the great physicians of her time, but none of the treatments had any effect. She died in 1679 at the age of forty-seven.
''The Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy''
The text itself was probably written in 1677 and shows the influence of
Franciscus Mercurius van Helmont.
The text was first published in Latin translation by van Helmont in
Amsterdam
Amsterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Amstel'') is the capital and most populous city of the Netherlands, with The Hague being the seat of government. It has a population of 907,976 within the city proper, 1,558,755 in the urban ar ...
in 1690 as ''Principia philosophiae antiquissimae et recentissimae''. An English retranslation appeared in 1692.
The ''Principles'' develops Conway's monistic view of the world as created from one substance. Conway is critical of the
Cartesian idea that bodies are constituted of dead matter, of
Henry More's concept of the soul in his ''Antidote Against Atheism,'' and of
dualist theories of the
relationship between the body and spirit.
Bibliography
''The principles of the most ancient and modern philosophy''(London: n. publ., 1692) 168 pp. in 12°. – originally printed in Latin: ''Principia philosophiae antiquissimae et recentissimae de Deo, Christo & Creatura'', Amsterdam: M. Brown 1690.
*''Letters. The Correspondence of Anne, Viscountess Conway, Henry More and their friends, 1642–1684'', ed. M. H. Nicolson (London 1930) 517 pp.
* Collaborations with
Franciscus Mercurius van Helmont (1614–1698)
**''A Cabbalistical Dialogue'' (1682) (in
Christian Knorr von Rosenroth
Christian Knorr von Rosenroth (15/16 July 1636 – 4 May 1689) was a German Christian Hebraist and Christian Cabalist born at Alt-Raudten (today Stara Rudna) in Silesia. After having completed his studies in the universities of Wittenberg and Le ...
, ''Kabbala denudata'', 1677–1684)
**''Two Hundred Quiries moderately propounded concerning the Doctrine of the Revolution of Humane Souls'' (1684).
References
Further reading
* Broad, Jacqueline. ''Women Philosophers of the Seventeenth Century''. Cambridge Cambridge University Press, 2002.
* Brown, Stuart. "Leibniz and Henry More’s Cabbalistic Circle", in S. Hutton (ed.) ''Henry More (1614–1687): Tercentenary Studies'', Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1990.(Challenges the view that Conway influenced Leibniz.)
* Duran, Jane. "Anne Viscountess Conway: a Seventeenth-Century Rationalist". ''Hypatia: a Journal of Feminist Philosophy''. 4 (1989): 64–79.
* Frankel, Lois. "Anne Finch, Viscountess Conway," Mary Ellen Waithe, ed., ''A History of Women Philosophers'', Vol. 3, Kluwer, 1991, pp. 41–58.
* Gabbey, Alan. "Anne Conway et Henry More: lettres sur Descartes" (''Archives de Philosophie'' 40, pp. 379–404)
*
* Hutton, Sarah.
Conway, Anne (c.1630–79), 1998, doi:10.4324/9780415249126-DA021-1. ''Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy'', Taylor and Francis, .
* Hutton, Sarah,
Lady Anne Conway, ''The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' (Fall 2008 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.).
* Hutton, Sarah. ''Anne Conway, a Woman Philosopher''. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
*
* King, Peter J. ''One Hundred Philosophers'' (New York: Barron's, 2004)
* Lascano, Marcy P. "Anne Conway: Bodies in the Spiritual World"; ''Philosophy Compass'' 8.4 (2013):327-336.
*
Merchant, Carolyn, "The Vitalism of Anne Conway: its Impact on Leibniz's Concept of the Monad" (''Journal of the History of Philosophy'' 17, 1979, pp. 255–269) (Argues that Conway influenced Leibniz by showing parallels between
Leibniz
Gottfried Wilhelm (von) Leibniz . ( – 14 November 1716) was a German polymath active as a mathematician, philosopher, scientist and diplomat. He is one of the most prominent figures in both the history of philosophy and the history of ma ...
and Conway.)
* Mercer, Christia. "Platonism in Early Modern Natural Philosophy: The Case of Leibniz and Conway", in ''Neoplatonism and the Philosophy of Nature'', James Wilberding and Christoph Horn, ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012, 103–26.
*
* White,Carol Wayne. ''The Legacy of Anne Conway (1631–1679): Reverberations from a Mystical Naturalism'' (State University of New York Press, 2009)
External links
*
Conway (1631–1679) – Anne Conway, Viscountess Conway and Killultaghencyclopedic article at ''Project Vox''.
*
*
Contains "The principles of the most ancient and modern philosophy", slightly modified for easier readingby Anne Conway (London: n. publ., 1692) a
A Celebration of Women WritersWhat Kind of Monist is Anne Finch Conway?Jessica Gordon-Roth, ''Journal of the American Philosophical Association'', Volume 4, Issue, Fall 2018, pp. 280–297
{{DEFAULTSORT:Conway, Anne Conway, Viscountess
Conway, Lady Anne Finch
Conway, Lady Anne Finch
17th-century English philosophers
17th-century English women writers
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Cambridge Platonists
Converts to Quakerism
British essayists
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Killultagh
British women non-fiction writers
English essayists
Conway, Anne Finch
English viscountesses
English women non-fiction writers
Conway, Lady Anne Finch
Anne
Anne, alternatively spelled Ann, is a form of the Latin female given name Anna. This in turn is a representation of the Hebrew Hannah, which means 'favour' or 'grace'. Related names include Annie.
Anne is sometimes used as a male name in the ...
Philosophers of mind
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