Conway, Anne

Abstract

Anne Conway (1631–1679) was one of the most intellectually adventurous and well‐read philosophers of religion in the seventeenth century. Her unfinished systematic treatise, posthumously published as The Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy , moves from the divine attributes through a theodicy based on universal salvation to a rejection of substance dualism. Her approach demonstrates a syncretist approach to religion that blends multiple intellectual traditions, including Cambridge Platonism, Quakerism, and the Kabbalah. Her admirers included Henry More, Francis von Helmont, and G.W. Leibniz.

Suffering for Justice in Anne Conway and Maria W. Stewart

“…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).…”