Anne Conway and Her Circle on Monads

Abstract

The goal of this article is to counter a belief, still widely held in the secondary literature, that Anne Conway espoused a theory of monads. By exploring her views on the divisibility of both bodies and spirits, I argue that monads could not possibly exist in her system. In addition, by offering new evidence about the Latin translation of Conway's Principles, and the possible authorship of its annotations, I argue that she never even suggested that there could be such things as monads. Alongside this, I explore the theories of monads that did get developed by the philosophers closest to Conway-Henry More, Francis Mercury van Helmont, and Christian Knorr von Rosenroth-thereby further underlining Conway's originality and philosophical daring.

Suffering for Justice in Anne Conway and Maria W. Stewart

“…As Julia Borcherding (2020, 127) notes, this entails that there are no "categorical boundaries between different types of substance." Borcherding bases this claim on Conway's apparent commitment to the divisibility of all finite things, a point that Jaspar Reid (2020) has also emphasized is central to her metaphysics. Jane Duran (1989, 69) claims that "there is no clear line of demarcation for Conway between the human and nonhuman or the living and the nonliving."…”

Anne Conway’s Exceptional Vitalism: Material Spirits and Active Matter

“…5 1. On the discovery of the text and the story of its Latin and English early modern editions, see Merchant (1979), Hutton (2004), andReid (2020).…”

“…Hutton (1997, 228) claims that Conway's created substance is composed of monads or particles. On why Conway's philosophy cannot accommodate monads, see Reid (2020).…”

“…On Conway and the Kabbalah, see Courdet (1996). On the addition of the references to the Cabala denudata by Christian Knorr von Rosenroth, see Reid (2020). It is in any case relevant that the references to the Kabbalistic corpus are mainly added to the first chapters, where Conway discusses mostly Christ and God, and occur less frequently when she moves to the created world.…”

Each book its own Babel

“…Moreover, the Kabbala explicitly figures in Conway's Principles, most visibly in the annotations in Chapter 1. However, these annotations have been brought under scrutiny (Reid 2020), as they might have been an addendum by the editor (Franciscus van Helmont), especially since the parts of the work from which many were quoted (Rosenroth's later volumes of the Kabbala Denudata) were not yet published when Conway died. Although she may have been well acquainted with the text through discussions, citation might have still been impossible for her.…”