Anne Conway
1631–1679 · English philosopher of spiritual vitalism and Kabbalistic monism
- First attested
- 1690First Latin edition, Principia philosophiae antiquissimae et recentissimae (Amsterdam, 1690).
Matter and spirit are not divided enemies, but degrees of one unfolding living reality.
Anne Conway, The Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy (1690).
17th-century English philosopher who formulated a vitalist monism unifying spirit and living matter.
Lady Anne Conway (1631–1679) was an English philosopher of the Cambridge Platonist circle whose posthumously published masterpiece, The Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy (1690), proposed a vitalist monism. Rejecting both Cartesian dualism and Hobbesian materialism, Conway asserted that all created beings consist of living spiritual substance capable of progressive perfection. Her work profoundly influenced Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz’s concept of the monad.
Light
Holistic vision of universal life, compassion for suffering, and metaphysical coherence.
Shadow
Metaphysical abstraction detached from practical everyday reality.