## 1. Life



Lady Anne Conway (nee Finch) (1631-1679) was the
posthumous daughter of Sir Heneage Finch and his second wife Elizabeth
Cradock, widow of Sir John Bennet. She was born in London in 1631, and
raised in the house now known as Kensington Palace, which then
belonged to the Finch family. The youngest child in a large family,
she was especially close to her half-brother, John Finch. Nothing is
known of her education, though she was clearly well-read by the time
she made the acquaintance of one of the
 Cambridge Platonists (see entry),
 Henry More (1614-1687). Of Anne Conway's remarkable
philosophical education, much more is known. Thanks to her brother,
who was his pupil at Christ's College, University of Cambridge, More
agreed to give her instruction in philosophy. Since, as a woman, she
was debarred from attending the university, he instructed her by
letter. The few letters that survive from this early correspondence
indicate that Cartesianism formed the basis of the course of
instruction she followed. Thereafter, Anne Conway and More remained
friends for the rest of her life. By this means she had a permanent
link to intellectual life beyond the confines of her domestic
situation.



In 1651 Anne Conway married Edward, third Viscount Conway, who was
heir to estates in Warwickshire and County Antrim in Ireland. Their
one child, Heneage, died in infancy. The Conway family possessed one
of the finest private libraries of the period, and her husband appears
to have encouraged his wife's intellectual interests. However, from
her teens she suffered from periodic bouts of illness, which became
more acute and more frequent as she got older. It was as a result of a
search for relief from this that she came into contact with the
Flemish physician and philosopher, Francis Mercury van Helmont, son of
the iatrochemist, Jan Baptiste van Helmont. During the last decade of
her life, the younger Van Helmont lived in her household. It was
through Van Helmont that Anne Conway was introduced to kabbalistic
thought and to Quakerism. These encounters resulted in radical new
departures for her: on the one hand, her study of the Jewish kabbalah
contributed to her decisive break with the Cartesianism of her
philosophical upbringing; on the other hand, her encounter with Van
Helmont's Quaker friends led to her conversion to Quakerism, shortly
before she died in 1679.


## 2. Conway's Philosophy in Outline



Anne Conway is known to be the author of a single treatise of
philosophy. This was written at the end of her life and published
anonymously in Amsterdam in 1690 in a Latin translation with the
title, *Principia philosophiae antiquissimae et recentissimae*.
It was translated back into English and printed in London in 1692 as
*The Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy*. The
other source for her philosophical activities is her correspondence
with Henry More.



Anne Conway's treatise is a work of Platonist metaphysics in which she
derives her system of philosophy from the existence and attributes of
God. The framework of Conway's system is a tripartite ontological
hierarchy of "species", the highest of which is God, the
source of all being. Christ, or "middle nature", links God
and the third species, called "Creature". God as the most
perfect being is infinitely good, wise, and just. A principle of
likeness links God and creation. Since God is good and just, his
creation too is good and just. Created substance, like God, consists
of spirit, but, unlike God, is constituted of infinite multiples of
spirit particles, which, as unities in multiplicity, may be described
as monadic (though not in a Leibnizian sense). All created substance
is living, capable of motion and perception. Anne Conway denies the
existence of material body as such, arguing that inert corporeal
substance would contradict the nature of God, who is life itself.
Incorporeal created substance is, however, differentiated from the
divine, principally on account of its mutability and multiplicity even
so, the infinite number and constant mutability of created things
constitutes an obverse reflection of the unity, infinity, eternity and
unchangeableness of God. The continuum between God and creatures is
made possible through "middle nature", an intermediary
being, through which God communicates life, action, goodness and
justice. "Middle nature", partakes of the nature of both
God and creation, and is therefore both a bridge and a buffer between
God and created things. Thus, although she conceives of created
substance as a continuum, and understands mutability as capacity for
increased perfection, she sought to avoid the charge of pantheism. The
spiritual perfectionism of Anne Conway's system has a dual aspect:
metaphysical and moral. On the one hand all things are capable of
becoming more spirit-like, that is, more refined *qua* spiritual
substance. At the same time, all things are capable of increased
goodness. She explains evil as a falling away from the perfection of
God, and understands suffering as part of a longer term process of
spiritual recovery. She denies the eternity of hell, since for God to
punish finite wrong-doing with infinite and eternal hell punishment
would be manifestly unjust and therefore a contradiction of the divine
nature. Instead she explains pain and suffering as purgative, with the
ultimate aim of restoring creatures to moral and metaphysical
perfection. Anne Conway's system is thus not just an ontology and but
a theodicy.


## 3. Substance



Strictly speaking, Conway's metaphysics is an ontology of three
kinds of being, which she calls "species". Each of these
is a single substance distinguished by a particular set of properties
which determine its essence, and set its ontological boundaries.
Conway holds that there can only be three species, and one species
cannot transform into another. The species are nevertheless
inter-connected through their shared properties (principally the
"communicable" attributes of God), and differentiated by
others (principally mutability which is a property of the second and
third species). The second species (Christ or Middle nature) is
differentiated from both God and other created things because it also
retains God's immutability. As a causal intermediary between God
and Created Nature, Middle nature is analogous to Cudworth's
Plastic Nature and More's Spirit of Nature, but a divinized
version.



The question of substance dualism within one of the three species only
arises in relation to the third species or created being. This species
is itself a unity in multiplicity, since it is a single substance
comprising innumerable spirit particles, which Conway also calls
species (a term indicative of their being parts that constitute the
whole). The third species as a whole is thus a unity of multiplicities
("the whole creation is just but one substance or entity",
exhibiting "a general unity of creatures with one
another"; *Principles* VII.4). Each of these spirit
particles consists of infinite spirit particles, every one of which
contains infinite numbers of others. These entities may be considered
monadic in the sense that each is a unity. But, like created nature as
a whole, they are unities in multiplicity, there being "a
special and peculiar unity among the parts of one [individual] species
in particular" (*Principles*, VII.4). It is from
aggregates of these that creatures are formed. The mutability of all
created beings means that there is considerable--nay
infinite--variety within created nature.



Conway's case for substance monism rests on fundamental
principles of her metaphysics: it is grounded first in her vitalist
conception of all being. On the principle of similitude whereby all
things bear some resemblance to God, everything in existence must be
in some sense alive--from God down through angels, to human
beings, animals, plants and mere dust. There are of course other
attributes of created things not shared by God (mutability, shape or
"figure" and solidity or density). Also, creatures, unlike
God, are multiple and subject to time. Since all substance created by
God must be living, it follows there can be no non-living substance.
Furthermore, matter being nothing but inert extension
("dead" is Conway's adjective) is devoid of likeness
to God, so cannot exist. It follows that body and soul (or spirit) are
not distinct substances, but different gradations or modes of the same
substance. Secondly, all created things are subject to change, and
change is only possible between things that are alike. This holds both
for divine causality and change within created nature. The main limit
to change is ontological: creatures may change radically, but not to
the extent that they might lose any of their essential properties, or
acquire others, for that would entail change of substance. It follows,
therefore, that within the ontological parameters of the third
species, all changes are changes of degree or mode, not substance.



For Conway body is, therefore, not a substance distinct from spirit,
but both are modes of the same created substance differentiated only
by relative density. Conway uses the metaphor of light and dark to
express the difference between them, light being associated with
spirit (soul) and darkness with body. In the scale of being, the
higher creatures are more active, spiritual and bright, while the
lower creatures are on the scale, the less active and more corporeal
and darker they become, though they never become completely dark. 


## 4. Creatures



All creatures, humans, animals, plants and minerals, consist of
composites of spirit and body (in Conway's sense), each of which
contains infinite numbers of other creatures, compounded, in their
turn of infinite creatures. All creatures interact and
inter-communicate by means of the emanation of spirits (even the most
dense bodies, produce and emit other, finer, or more subtle spirits).
Creatures are, furthermore subject to change. These changes can be
radical--body can become spirit and *vice versa*, while creatures
can metamorphose into other creatures, up or down the scale of nature.
Creaturely change takes the form of reconfigurations or as it were
re-balancing of the constituent corporeal and spiritual elements that
make-up a particular creature. This reflects the relative goodness of
the creature, such that the more good, and therefore more godlike a
creature becomes, the more spiritual its make-up. This is manifest in
terms of its increase or loss of capacity for action--the more
spiritual a creature, the more volatile and more able to act
("active and operative") and *vice versa*.



The mutable state of creatures raises the question of how far a
creature can change and still be the same individual thing?
Conway's answer is that outwardly every creature may change
radically, though not to such an extent that it exceeds the
ontological boundaries of the third species/created nature (e.g., by
acquiring the attributes of a higher species, God or Christ, or losing
the attribute of life). Creaturely change occurs across successive
life-times, rather than in the course of a single life span. The
identity of a creature is not co-terminous with its natural life span,
but persists throughout its existence in time. Thus a horse (to use
the example she gives) may transform into a human being through
incremental changes across in successive life spans. But its identity
as a living being persists through these changes. Conway explains
explains the continuous identity of an individual creature from one
state to another and across time, partly through her conception of the
composition of living creatures, which are structured as organized
orderly composites, the unity of which is sustained by a dominant
spirit: 



> 
> 
> the unity of the spirits composing this spirit is...so great that
> nothing can dissolve it...thus it happens that the soul of every
> human being will remain a whole soul for eternity.
> (*Principles*, VII.4; see Thomas 2017, Hutton 2004). 
> 
> 
> 



This "captain spirit", determines the moral constitution
of the creature, and its continuous identity across time, throughout
the metamorphoses which the creature undergoes. Another limit on
creaturely change is that an individual creature cannot transform into
another individual (Peter cannot become Paul, or Judas). The reason
for this rests with divine justice: it would be unjust for Peter to be
rewarded for Paul's righteousness, or for Peter to be punished
for the sins of Judas.


## 4. Perfectibility



A key feature of Conway's system is perfectibility. All created
beings have the potential to increase in perfection. Perfectibility is
grounded in divine goodness, and made possible by the mutability of
created things. Holding to the Platonic conception of goodness as
godlikeness, Conway argues that since all creatures have some
resemblance to God, all creatures are endowed with a capacity for
good, and an impulse to strive for greater good ("continual
motion or operation, which most certainly strives for their further
good"; *Principles* VI.6). Everything is thus
perfectible, with the potential to increase in goodness, even beyond
its original state in its first creation, *ad infinitum*. But
nothing can become infinitely good, because then it would become
God.



However, the mutability of the creatures' condition means that
they may change for the worse. There is no inevitability about this,
since moral corruption in creatures results from either a deliberate
act of will or indifference of will (a failure to pursue the good)
(Lascano 2018). The moral degeneration of the creature is mitigated by
the fact that no creature can become so corrupt as to lose its
God-given goodness entirely. (A creature utterly lacking in goodness
would be so unlike God that it could not exist). The residual goodness
of the creature holds out the possibility of recovery from its
degenerate state. To understand how this comes about, let us recall,
first, that the change in creatures is physical as well as moral, such
that as a creature degenerates, it becomes more corporeal
("hardened"). Furthermore, just as a creature can never
become utterly evil, so it can never be reduced to mere corporeality,
because that would be a lifeless condition, so unlike to God as not to
exist.



The second factor in the regenerative process is punishment for sin:
here pain has a crucial role. Conway holds that the disequilibrium
between corporeality and spirit, whereby it becomes more corporeal, is
a painful condition. The pain so experienced is punishment for the sin
which brought about it to this condition (in that respect sin is its
own punishment). But Conway holds, further, that the purpose of
punishment is not merely retributive; pain has a purgative effect on
the degenerate creature, leading to its release from its overly
corporeal, inactive condition, and enabling it to reset itself on a
trajectory of recovery of its original godlikeness. In this process
its constitutional composition becomes increasingly refined
(spirit-like) in tandem with its increase in goodness. The
trajectories of degeneration, on the one hand, and amelioration echo
Plato's account of immortality of the soul in the *Phaedo*
80d-84b. In Conway's version, pain and suffering are
beneficial because they have a restorative function, thereby playing a
crucial role in sustaining the over-all dynamic towards perfectibility
in her metaphysical system. In this way Conway vindicates the justice
of God. Conway's system is thus a theodicy, which explains pain
and suffering as a transient conditions, contributory to the
amelioration and recovery of creatures. The consequences in terms of
religious belief are that Conway denies the eternity of hell
punishment and upholds the doctrine the universal salvation or
*apocotastasis*.


## 5. Conclusion



Anne Conway presents her system as an answer to the dominant
philosophies of her time. Several chapters of her treatise are devoted
to a refutation of the dualism of Henry More and Descartes. (She does,
however, express her admiration for Descartes' physics). She also
takes issue with Hobbes and Spinoza, whom she charges with material
pantheism, which confounds God and created substance. Anne Conway's
concept of substance probably owes much to Platonism and Kabbalism
(which, in the version she encountered was heavily Platonised). Her
thinking also shows the impact of the teachings of the heterodox
Christian theologian, Origen, who was much admired by her teacher,
Henry More. In many respects, her system anticipates the philosophy of
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, who recognized affinities with his own
philosophy. (Leibniz in fact owned a copy of her
treatise--probably a gift to him by their mutual friend, Van
Helmont). However, although she was unusual as a female philosopher of
the seventeenth century, by virtue of the fact that her philosophy
achieved publication, the anonymity of Conway's work has ensured
that she has suffered the same neglect that has been the lot of most
pre-modern female philosophers.