Anne Conway (philosopher)

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Anne Conway
Philosopher
Spouse
​
​
(after 1651)​
ChildrenHeneage Edward Conway
Parent(s)
John Finch
(brother)

Anne Conway (also known as Viscountess Conway;

Gottfried Leibniz, and Hugh Trevor-Roper called her "England's greatest female philosopher."[4][5]

Life

Anne Finch was born to

John Finch, encouraged her interests in philosophy and theology. He introduced Anne to one of his tutors at Christ's College, Cambridge, the Platonist Henry More. This led to a lifelong correspondence and close friendship between Henry and Anne. The pair's communication was focused on the subject of René Descartes' philosophy. Eventually, Anne grew from More's informal pupil to his intellectual equal. When speaking about her, More said 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 only out-gone all of your own Sex, but even of that other also."[7]

In 1651, she married Edward Conway, later 1st Earl of Conway. Her husband was also interested in philosophy and had been tutored by More. Anne and Edward established their place of residence at Anne's home at Kensington Palace. In the year following her marriage, More dedicated his book Antidote against Atheism to Anne. In 1658, she gave birth to her only child, Heneage Edward Conway, who died of smallpox just two years later.[8] Anne herself had also contracted the illness that had killed her son, but had managed to survive the disease.[9]

Anne contacted

Quakerism, eventually converting in 1677. In England at that time, the Quakers were generally disliked and feared, and suffered persecution and even imprisonment. When Anne decided to convert, she made her house a centre for Quaker activity.[citation needed
] While her family was not very supportive of Anne's conversion to Quakerism, they still respected her decision.

Anne's life was marked by the recurrence of severe

Theodore Turquet de Mayerne, as well as natural philosopher Robert Boyle.[12] She had also consulted William Harvey, who was a physician and researcher of how blood circulated in the human body. Even though Conway was famously treated by many of the great physicians of her time, none of the treatments proved to be successful.[13]
She died in 1679 at the age of forty-seven.

Works

The Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy

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.[14] The text itself was likely written in 1677, and shows the influence of Franciscus Mercurius van Helmont.[15] The text was first published in Latin translation by van Helmont in Amsterdam in 1690 as Principia philosophiae antiquissimae et recentissimae. An English retranslation appeared in 1692.[16]

Correspondence

Throughout Anne Conway's life, she had written numerous letters back and forth to

Francis Mercury van Helmont
, and other major thinkers of their time. Most of Conway's letters were back and forth to Henry More, as they talked about numerous philosophies and theological concepts. At times, Conway would speak about personal things like the death of her son, and other various family-related events.

There were also around a dozen letters written to Conway's father-in-law,

Lord Conway, and around a dozen addressed to Conway from her brother, John Finch.[17] These letters contained writings of many different things including personal information, discussion about philosophy, and considerations of social issues. In the 20th century, Marjorie Hope Nicolson collected as many letters of Conway's as she could obtain. In 1930, she wrote a novel using 307 letters of Conway's correspondence, and an account of bibliographical information.[18] In 1992, Sarah Hutton wrote a revised version of Nicolson's Conway Letters.[19] Nicolson's version has a primary focus on Conway's social life between her friends and family as well as an analysis of her relationship with Henry More and others.[20]

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, Kabbala denudata, 1677–1684)
    • Two Hundred Quiries moderately propounded concerning the Doctrine of the Revolution of Humane Souls (1684).

References

  1. ^ a b "Conway (1631-1679)". Project Vox. Retrieved 2 March 2022.
  2. OCLC 909355784
    .
  3. ISBN 978-0-252-03022-2
    .
  4. ^ Trevor-Roper, Hugh. One Hundred Letters from Hugh Trevor-Roper, Oxford 2014, 73
  5. ^ Israel, Jonathan I. Spinoza, Life and Legacy. Oxford: Oxford University Press 2023, 1127-28
  6. ^ a b Ablondi, Fred (1 January 2014). Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). "Géraud de Cordemoy" (Fall 2014 ed.).
  7. OCLC 56208440.[page needed
    ]
  8. OCLC 76904888
    .
  9. ^ Project Vox team. (2019). “Anne Conway, Viscountess Conway and Killultagh.” Project Vox. Duke University Libraries. https://projectvox.org/conway-1631-1679/
  10. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/53695. Retrieved 21 August 2023. (Subscription or UK public library membership
    required.)
  11. ^ Carol Wayne White, The Legacy of Anne Conway (1631–1679): Reverberations from a Mystical Naturalism (2008), p. 6.
  12. ^ Project Vox team. (2019). “Anne Conway, Viscountess Conway and Killultagh.” Project Vox. Duke University Libraries. https://projectvox.org/conway-1631-1679/
  13. PMID 33943893.[page needed
    ]
  14. ISBN 9780521039178
    .
  15. ^ Merchant, Carolyn (1986). "Quaker and Philosopher" (PDF). Guildford Review (23): 2–13. Retrieved 20 January 2018.
  16. ^ Derksen, Louise D. "20th WCP: Anne Conway's Critique of Cartesian Dualism". www.bu.edu. Retrieved 20 January 2018.
  17. ^ Project Vox team. (2019). “Anne Conway, Viscountess Conway and Killultagh.” Project Vox. Duke University Libraries. https://projectvox.org/conway-1631-1679/
  18. ^ G. C. Moore Smith. The Review of English Studies 7, no. 27 (1931): 349–56. http://www.jstor.org/stable/507935.
  19. ^ Project Vox team. (2019). “Anne Conway, Viscountess Conway and Killultagh.” Project Vox. Duke University Libraries. https://projectvox.org/conway-1631-1679/
  20. ^ Duran, Jane. “ANNE CONWAY.” In Eight Women Philosophers: Theory, Politics, and Feminism, 49–76. University of Illinois Press, 2006. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5406/j.ctt1xcn4h.7.

Further reading

External links
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