Anne Conway

Anne Conway was an English philosopher who worked closely with the Cambridge Platonist Henry More and with Francis Mercury van Helmont. Her only treatise, published posthumously, rejects both Cartesian dualism and Hobbes's materialism. Within created nature, she argued, spirit and body differ only in degree within one living created substance; her wider ontology distinguishes three kinds of being: God, Christ or 'Middle Nature', and creatures. Her work was read with interest by Leibniz.

Key ideas

• Created things are one kind of substance; spirit and body differ only in degree.
• All creatures are living and capable of change and perception in some measure.
• Creation has three levels: God, Christ or 'Middle Nature', and creatures.
• Suffering and change in creatures serve their progressive restoration toward the good.

Major works

• The Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy (posthumous: Latin 1690, English 1692)
• The Conway Letters (her correspondence with Henry More and others, published 1930)

In the Book corner

• The Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy Written c. 1670s; published 1690 (Latin), 1692 (English) · Advanced
  The only surviving philosophical work of the English philosopher Anne Conway, written in the 1670s and published after her death, first in…

In the conversation

• Question Does Spinoza solve the mind–body problem or just rename it? Pieter van Dijkhuizen · 4 replies