Anne Conway

Abstract

This 2004 book was the first intellectual biography of one of the very first English women philosophers. At a time when very few women received more than basic education, Lady Anne Conway wrote an original treatise of philosophy, her Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy, which challenged the major philosophers of her day - Descartes, Hobbes and Spinoza. Sarah Hutton's study places Anne Conway in her historical and philosophical context, by reconstructing her social and intellectual milieu. She traces her intellectual development in relation to friends and associates such as Henry More, Sir John Finch, F. M. van Helmont, Robert Boyle and George Keith. And she documents Conway's debt to Cambridge Platonism and her interest in religion - an interest which extended beyond Christian orthodoxy to Quakerism, Judaism and Islam. Her book offers an insight into both the personal life of a very private woman, and the richness of seventeenth-century intellectual culture.

Anne Conway’s Exemplary Engagement with Origenist Thought

“…112 Hutton's evaluation is accurate in broad strokes, in that the Viscountess can be said to uphold the Origenist position on pre-existence of the soul only if one re-characterises the position so that 'souls can be said to pre-exist bodies, not [only] in the sense that there was a time when souls were not in bodies, but [also] in the sense that soul or spirit is the original substance of all things, preceding any bodily state.' 113 Although this acknowledges that their similarity is inexact, it does not fully appreciate the extent to which Anne Conway has reformed the Origenist position. The pre-existence of souls, as characterised in A Letter and by Henry More, depends upon a view of creation that is essentially dualistic.…”

Suffering for Justice in Anne Conway and Maria W. Stewart

“…More praised her patience in the preface to the Principles , written after her death, as did her physician Thomas Willis. Sarah Hutton (2004, 180) notes that her Quaker correspondents, including William Penn and George Keith, advised patience like More, but unlike More they emphasized interiority.…”

“…In Anne Conway's sole philosophical monograph, she argues that every finite thing is a spirit, that bodies are modes of spirit, that spirits become more or less bodily in relation to their good or bad choices, that these bad choices and subsequent increased embodiment explain pain, and that eventually all spirits will achieve a good, pure state. Although Leibniz coined the term “theodicy” thirty‐five years after she wrote, Conway's Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy is often called a theodicy (Popkin 1990; Harrison 1993; Coudert and Corse [1670] 1996; Byrne 2005; White 2008; Parageau 2018; Burns 2021; Hutton 2021; Felter Vaucanson 2021; Yenter 2021). Theodicies are attempts to reconcile the existence of God with the existence of evil (or amount of evil or kind of evil).…”

“…There is an immediate relief from suffering in the form of “a perfect union with Christ.” This spiritual rapture is a clear connection between her thought and the Quakers. Unlike the moderate Enlightenment thinkers, like John Locke, who condemned progressive religious radicals like the Quakers as “enthusiasts,” Conway invites them into her home, breaking down a significant class barrier, and eventually converts to Quakerism, which included taking on rustic Quaker dress rather than the dress of a lady of her station (Hutton 2004, 185). For Locke and others, Quaker epistemology was socially dangerous because when a person believes they are in direct contract with God, it seems there can be no check on their beliefs or actions (see Locke 4.19).…”

“…The Quakers faced persecution for how their beliefs led them to deny deference to those higher in the social hierarchy. Sarah Hutton (2004, 179) posits, “The attraction of Quakerism for Anne Conway may be explained, in part, by the fact that she recognised parallels between her own suffering and the sufferings and persecutions endured by early Friends.” And as Carolyn Wayne White (2008, 29) describes, “Conway's interest in the Quakers was not due solely to their emphasis on simplicity, or to their variant form of Christianity, but fundamentally on a shared sense of embodied suffering.” Ridiculed as radicals and dismissed as disrupters, Quakers sought to envision a new community of equals, including embracing gender equality in meetings and being among the first white abolitionists. The direction of Conway's thought is toward this radical equality.…”