Anne Conway (philosopher)

Anne Conway
Born Anne Finch
(1631-12-14)14 December 1631
London, England
Died 18 February 1679(1679-02-18) (aged 47)
London, England
Occupation Philosopher
Nationality British

Anne Conway (also known as Viscountess Conway) (née Finch; 14 December 1631 – 18 February 1679) was an English philosopher whose work, in the tradition of the Cambridge Platonists, was an influence on Leibniz. Conway's thought is original as it is rationalist philosophy, with hallmarks of gynocentric concerns and patterns, and in that sense it was unique among seventeenth-century systems.[1]

History of life

She was born to Sir Heneage Finch (who had held the posts of the Recorder of London and Speaker of the House of Commons under Charles I) and his second wife, Elizabeth (daughter of William Cradock of Staffordshire). Her father died the week before her birth. She was the youngest child.[2] Her early education was by tutors and included Latin, to which she later added Greek and Hebrew. Her stepbrother, John Finch, who encouraged her interested in philosophy and theology, introduced Anne to the Platonist Henry More, 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 Descartes' philosophy, over the course of which Anne grew from More's informal pupil to his intellectual 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."[3] Conway grew up in the house now known as Kensington Palace, which her family owned at the time.[2]

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 son, Heneage Edward Conway, who died of smallpox 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, 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 veins opened). She had medical consults from Dr. Thomas Willis.[4] Conway was famously treated by many of the great physicians of her time, but none of the treatments had any effect.[5] She died in 1679 at the age of forty-seven.

The Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy

First published in Latin in 1690, 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. She is critical of Henry More's concept of the soul in his Antidote Against Atheism and dualist theories of the relationship between the body and spirit.[6]

Bibliography

References

  1. ↑ Jane Duran (2006). Eight Women Philosophers: Theory, Politics, And Feminism. University of Illinois Press. pp. 73–. ISBN 978-0-252-03022-2. Retrieved 13 January 2013.
  2. 1 2 Ablondi, Fred (2014-01-01). Zalta, Edward N., ed. Géraud de Cordemoy (Fall 2014 ed.).
  3. ↑ Women Philosophers of the Seventeenth Century. ISBN 9780521039178.
  4. ↑ Carol Wayne White, The Legacy of Anne Conway (1631-1679): Reverberations from a Mystical Naturalism (2008), p. 6.
  5. ↑ Owen, Gilbert Roy (1937). "The Famous Case of Lady Anne Conway". Annals of Medical History.
  6. ↑ Women Philosophers of the Seventeenth Century, pg. 66-67. ISBN 9780521039178.

Further reading

External links

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