Abstract
The main goal of this chapter is to present the basic components of Anne Conway’s metaphysics of sympathy. To that end, I will explicate her concepts of God or first substance and second substance or Christ with special emphasis on the key role that the second substance plays in her philosophy. I argue that one of the keys to Conway’s system lies in her reinterpretation of the Christian narrative about suffering. She combines Christian imagery with ancient and modern ideas in an attempt to create a philosophy that will appeal to people of all faiths and explain ‘all phenomena in the entire universe’ (VI § 4 (30)). Christ’s role as a metaphysical and moral figure is crucial to Conway’s philosophy and helps explain her views about suffering and the importance of sympathy in her philosophy.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
This chapter is part of a much longer paper that offered an overview of Conway’s philosophy and that was written over 6 years ago. During the intervening years, I have more fully developed my interpretation of the Principles, which will appear in a book, The Philosophy of Anne Conway, and have organized a new translation and edition of the Principles, along with Andrew Arlig and Jasper Reid. Although many of my views have developed in the intervening years, I stand-by the basic claims about the metaphysics of sympathy presented in this paper. Except for this footnote, the rest of this chapter is the one written 6 years ago.
- 2.
On the state of the original manuscript and the history its publication, see Hutton, Anne Conway, 5–6. Conway composed her work, which was apparently not intended for publication, in English, but that manuscript was lost after it was translated and published it in Latin. There is little reason therefore to fuss about the Latin terms and phraseology of the Principles. I only offer the Latin when it diverges significantly from what is offered in the Coudert and Corse translation. For a thorough discussion of van Helmont and his relation to Conway, see Hutton, Anne Conway, 145–55.
- 3.
Besides her letters, which are only intermittently philosophical, the Principles is the only philosophical work that we have by Conway. For her letters, see The Conway Letters: The Correspondence of Anne Viscountess Conway, Henry Moore, and their Friends (1642–1684), eds. Marjorie Hope Nicholson and Sarah Hutton (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992). For a translation of the Principles that includes the Latin text, see The Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy, trans. Peter Loptson (Delmar, NY: Scholar’s Facsimiles and Reprints, 1998). For the most recent edition of the book, see The Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy, trans. Alison Coudert and Taylor Corse (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
- 4.
Some of its philosophical ideas were discussed in the last quarter of the seventeenth century, but forgotten soon after For more about how early modern women philosophers ‘disappeared,’ see Eileen O’Neill, ‘Disappearing Ink: Early Modern Women Philosophers and their Fate in History,’ in Philosophy in a Feminist Voice: Critiques and Reconstructions, ed. Janet Kournay (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), 17–62. Merchant and Duran overestimate Conway’s influence on Leibniz, but the great man did take her views very seriously. See Merchant, ‘The Vitalism of Anne Conway’ and Duran, ‘Anne Viscountess Conway.’
- 5.
See especially Hutton, Anne Conway, which offers a thorough account of the rich intellectual currents of Conway’s milieu; Broad, Women Philosophers; and White, The Legacy of Anne Conway. For interesting comparisons between Conway’s philosophy and that of Margaret Cavendish, see Sarah Hutton, ‘Anne Conway, Margaret Cavendish and Seventeenth-Century Scientific Thought,’ in Women, Science, and Medicine 1500–1700, eds. L. Hunter and S. Hutton (Stroud/Gloucestershire: Sutton Publishing, 1997) and Broad, Women Philosophers.
- 6.
For a good overview of her thought and a brief biography, see Jacqueline Broad, Women Philosophers of the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 65–89. For a lengthier account, see Carol Wayne White, The Legacy of Anne Conway (1631–1679): Reverberations from a Mystical Naturalism (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2008). For a book length treatment of her life and influences, see Sarah Hutton, Anne Conway: A Woman Philosopher (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). For other main works, see Lois Frankel, ‘Anne Finch, Viscountess Conway,’ in A History of Women Philosophers: Modern Women Philosophers, ed. Mary Ellen Waithe, vol.3, 1600–1900 (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1995), 41–58; Carolyn Merchant, ‘The Vitalism of Anne Conway: Its Impact on Leibniz’s Concepts of the Monad,’ Journal of the History of Philosophy 17 (1979): 255–69; and Jane Duran, ‘Anne Viscountess Conway: A Seventeenth Century Rationalist,’ Hypatia 4, 1 (1989): 64–79.
- 7.
References to The Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy (hereafter Principles) include the book, section, and page number from Coudert and Corse translation. So, citation here is Book VI, section 4, pp. 30–31.
- 8.
This definition of modus is from a popular mid-seventeenth-century philosophical lexicon. See Johann Micraelius, Lexicon Philosophicum terminorum Philosophis unitarum (Jena, 1653), 666. In another popular lexicon first published in 1692, mode is defined as a ‘determination toward a fixed being.’ See Stephan Chauvin, Lexicon Philosophicum, 2nd ed. (Leeuwarden, 1713; repr. Düsseldorf: Stern-Verlag Janssen & Co., 1967), 412–13. For Descartes on mode, see especially Principles of Philosophy, Part I, articles 56, 61, 64 (AT VIIIA 25–25, 29–30, 31).
- 9.
For example, the young Leibniz claims that the essence of the number 6 can be ‘expressed’ as either 2 × 3, 4 + 2, or innumerable other modes. Each expresses the essence in a determinant way, though each ‘differs from the other.’ See Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Sämtliche Schriften und Briefe, Series 6, volume 3, 518–19.
- 10.
Conway does not attribute any modes to the second substance. Nor does it seem plausible that the logos would have a ‘determination’ unless we consider the logos proforikos a determination of the logos ousios. But she does write that ‘the logos proforikos’ is ‘the word which is expressed [expressum] and revealed’ IV §2 (21). Note that Coudert and Corse translate expressum here as ‘is uttered,’ which misses the point of the passage. About the third substance, Conway equates mode with a property. This is a place where the Coudert and Corse translation does not fit the Latin very well. In VI §3, Conway contrasts the substance and essence with mode and property. Coudert and Corse translate the Latin proprietatas as attribute, which is misleading. See VI §3 (29). In a longer version of this paper, I discuss Conway’s important comments about modes of the third substance. It can be difficult to navigate her account of nature because she uses the term ‘mode’ to refer to each of the following three sorts of things: individual creatures, each of the two constituents of individual creatures (spirit and body), and subspecies (VI §3 (30)). Careful attention to the text suggests that each of the these is a mode of vitality and that the difference among them lies merely in how determinant each is as a way of expressing that vitality. For example, the (sub)species, horse, is less determinant than that of the individual horse. See especially VI §3 (29–30), VI §4 (31), IX §5 65–66).
- 11.
See Merchant, ‘The Vitalism of Anne Conway,’ 255, 258–64; Duran, ‘Anne Viscountess Conway: A Seventeenth Century Rationalist;’ Hutton, ‘Anne Conway, Margaret Cavendish and Seventeenth-Century Scientific Thought;’ Broad, Women Philosophers, 80–89; and Stephen Clucas, ‘The Duchess and Viscountess: Negotiations between Mechanism and Vitalism in the Natural Philosophies of Margaret Cavendish and Anne Conway,’ In-Between: Essays and Studies in Literary Criticism 9,1 (2000): 125–36.
- 12.
See VI-VII, especially VI §8 (37), VI §10 (38), VII §1 (43), VII §1 (42), VI §7 (35), VII §1 (41–42).
- 13.
There is insufficient space here to discuss her interesting views about the third substance or nature. There are helpful summarizes of this part of her system in the literature. See notes 5 and 6.
- 14.
Hutton does not go into very many details about the precise metaphysical role of Christ as middle substance, but does explain that ‘Middle Nature bridges the gap between God and creatures,’ forms ‘an ontological barrier between nature and God,’ and so ‘is both bridge and buffer between God and the world. See Hutton, Anne Conway, 225. Loptson emphazes that creatures are always ‘being created by God through the agency or medium of Christ.’ See Loptson’s Introduction to his edition of the Principles, 36.
- 15.
Hutton’s impressive intellectual biography is the most thoroughgoing account of Conway’s life, wide-ranging intellectual sources, the curious history of the Principles, and the nature and consequences of her illness. See Anne Conway, passim. The book contains citations to other accounts of Conway’s illness.
- 16.
As noted earlier, Conway composed her work in English. About her manuscript, Henry More wrote: ‘These Fragments of that incomparable Person, the Lady Viscountess Conway … are only Writings abruptly and scatteredly, I may add also obscurely, written in a Paper-Book, with a Black-lead Pen, toward the latter end of her long and tedious Pains and Sickness, which she never had Opportunity to revise, correct, or perfect’ (See Coudert and Corse, Principles, 3). The original English manuscript was lost after van Helmont oversaw its translation and publication in 1690.
- 17.
See Hutton, Anne Conway, especially chapters 2, 4, 8, and 9 on the complications involving Conway’s sources, interests, and education. Also see Loptson’s Introduction to his edition of the Principles and Coudert and Corse’s Introduction to their edition. On the significance of the Jewish mystical tradition of the Kabbalah, see Coudert and Corse’s Introduction, vii-xv, xviii-xxii. Broad contains a helpful account of the relation between her views and those of More. See Broad, Women Philosophers, 66–80. Also see Richard H. Popkin, ‘The Spiritualist Cosmologies of Henry Moore and Anne Conway,’ in Henry More (1614–1687): Tercentenary Studies, ed. S. Hutton (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1990): 98–113.White is helpful on the complicated relations among Conway, More, van Helmont, and the Quakers. See White, The Legacy of Anne Conway, chapter 2. For an account of how specific Platonist doctrines inform her natural philosophy, see my ‘Platonism in Early Modern Natural Philosophy: The Case of Leibniz and Conway,’ in Neoplatonic Natural Philosophy, eds. Christoph Horn and James Wilberding (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 103–26.
- 18.
Eyjólfur. K. Emilsson, ‘Cognition and Its Object,’ in The Cambridge Companion to Plotinus, ed. Lloyd Gerson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 217–249, 245. On this point, also see O’Meara, ‘The Hierarchical Ordering of Reality in Plotinus’ and my Leibniz’s Metaphysics, 178–92.
- 19.
Although the relationship between self-sufficiency and unity is a fascinating topic, there is insufficient time to discuss it at length here. There is a huge amount of literature on these Platonist principles. For a good introduction, see Dominic J. O’Meara, Plotinus in the Cambridge History of Philosophy in Late Antiquity, 301–24.
- 20.
Plato, Phaedo, 80a-e. Hutton discusses the complications of Conway’s relation to Plotinus and the history of Platonism. See her Anne Conway, passim. Broad reports that Conway read Plotinus (which seems likely), but offers no citations to support this claim. See Broad, Women Philosophers, 67.
- 21.
As Coudert and Corse write in their Introduction to the Principles, ‘The Kabbalah is the commonly use term for the mystical teachings of Judaism, especially those originating after the twelfth century. The word itself means ‘that which is received’ or tradition, ‘because it was thought to represent the esoteric, unwritten aspects of the divine revelation granted to Moses on Mount Sinai, while the Bible represented the exoteric, written part of the same revelation’ (xviii). The introduction slightly exaggerates Conway’s debt to the Kabbalah, but its account is helpful (see xvii–xxii) as Hutton, Anne Conway, passim.
- 22.
Conway does not refer to the individual things in the created world as minds, but they are clearly mind-like things in that they are subjects of perceptions and all capable of developing consciousness.
- 23.
There is a long tradition of philosophers who assume that the divine source of the world is a unified, simple thing. One of the main sources of this tradition is Plotinus who insists that the supreme being is ‘the One itself’ where the oneness is understood in terms of simplicity. He writes, e.g.: ‘there must be something simple before all things, and this must be other than all the things which come after it, existing by itself, not mixed with the things which derive from it.... For if it is not to be simple, outside all coincidence and composition and really one, it could not be a first principle, and it is the most self-sufficient, because it is simple and the first of all: for that which is not the first needs that which is before it, and what is not simple is in need of its simple components so that it can come into existence from them’ (Enneads V.4.1.6-15). Notice the connection here between simplicity and self-sufficiency.
- 24.
Needless to say, this is a thorny topic. The hierarchy of being is often described in terms of ontological and causal dependency, but not always. For a good introduction to the issues, see O’Meara, ‘The Hierarchical Ordering of Reality in Plotinus,’ 66–81, and Kevin Corrigan, ‘Essence and Existence in the Enneads,’ 105–29, The Cambridge Companion to Plotinus, ed. Lloyd P. Gerson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). For a recent discussion of these metaphysical topics, see Lloyd P. Gerson. The Cambridge History of Philosophy in Late Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), passim.
- 25.
The history of the causal theory of emanation is rich and complicated. For more on the views in early modern philosophy discussed here, see Mercer, Leibniz’s Metaphysics: Its Origins and Development (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), especially 178–195. In the seventeenth century, there were a number of different ways of accounting for emanation. For a recent helpful survey of these, see Eric Schliesser, ‘Newtonian Emanation, Spinozism, Measurement and the Baconian Origins of the Laws of Nature,’ Foundations of Science 10, 3 (2005): 1–19.
- 26.
My account of emanation, owes a good deal to Eileen O’Neill, ‘Influxus Physicus.’ in Nadler, ed., Causation in Early Modern Philosophy, 1993, 27–55.
- 27.
For a classic account of Stoic physics in general and their notion of sympathy and pneuma in particular, see S. Sambursky, Physics of the Stoics (New York: Macmillan, 1959), especially chapter II. As Sambursky makes clear, the later Stoics tended to identify the pneuma with the divinity (36–42). It would seem then that at least some Stoical explanations for sympathy did not differ greatly from those offered by the Platonists.
- 28.
For Leibniz’s early endorsement of this relation, see, e.g.,Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Sämtliche Schriften und Briefe (Berlin, Akademie Verlag, 1923-), Series VI, Vol. 1, 464. In Leibniz’s Metaphysics, I discuss these ideas at greater length and argue that Leibniz’s famous preestablished harmony evolved out of his views about sympathy and related notions. See especially 192–98 and 300–340.
- 29.
For more on the development of Leibniz’s account of sympathy and the mirroring of creatures, see my Leibniz’s Metaphysics, 217–20. Neither Leibniz nor Conway assumes that a mind or creature must be conscious to benefit from its enhancement relation with another mind or creature. That is, the perception need not be a conscious one.
- 30.
Like Leibniz, Margaret Cavendish, and other seventeenth-century philosophers, Conway believes that the infinity of God entails that of creatures.
- 31.
Conway’s use of the term ‘essence’ can be confusing. Strictly speaking, there are only three substances God, Christ or Logos, and the created world, each with its own essence. But in talking about creatures, she insists that each has an essence that constitutes its identity through time. There is insufficient time to argue for this here, but Conway thinks of this essence primarily as a moral one with its own ‘ruling spirit.’ See, e.g., VII §3 (53), (VII §4 (55)).
- 32.
There are some passages in the Principles in which Conway does not distinguish clearly between Christ as second substance and as historic person. But once we have the distinction in mind, it is easy to see how she employs the two and sometimes plays them off one another. For example, V §3 contains a fairly lengthy discussion of Christ as mediator between God and creatures. She discusses ‘the moral, not the natural immutability of the Messiah’ and notes that ‘[s]ome people object that if Christ had been naturally immutable, then he was tempted in vain.’ This suggests that that she has conflated the two Christs (V §3 (25)). But then she goes on to discuss Christ as the ‘mediating being’ (V §4 (25)), who emanated from God so that he is ‘the perfect first born emanated immediately from God at the beginning’ (V §3 (25)). Needless to say, that Christ could not be tempted. It seems clear that Conway understands Christ here as the second substance. Further evidence that she has demoted the historic Christ to the status of mere creature is available in her discussion of the third substance in chapters VI–IX and its relation to Christ. When she discusses Christ in those chapters, she is always referring to the metaphysical one. See, for example, VII §3 (48), VII §3 (50), and VIII §3 (60).
- 33.
In the Latin version of the Principles, the word here is ‘verbum.’ See I §7 (10).
- 34.
Conway explains that Christ ‘comes into existence by generation or emanation from God rather than by creation strictly speaking’ (V §4 (25)).
- 35.
God has one attribute that is not ‘communicable,’ namely, immutability. See V §3 (24), V §5 (26), and VI §1 (28).
- 36.
John 1:1–2. (Revised Standard Version; all further biblical references are to this edition).
- 37.
Conway is quite explicit about her reliance on ‘the ancient hypothesis of the Hebrews’ for her account of ‘the first-born son of God.’ See annotations to I §5 (11).For a discussion of the Platonist and Kabbalistic sources of this ‘dual logos’ and for other citations, see Hutton, Anne Conway, 159–66.
- 38.
Commentators have noted the similarities between Conway and Leibniz, and their philosophies are strikingly similar in their details. But they also differ in crucial ways. For example, Leibniz famously maintains that the freedom God demands that there be an infinite number of possible worlds or plans for creation among which God chose the best. For some classic citations and an account of his view, see Brandon Look, ‘Leibniz’s Modal Metaphysics’ Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2008, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/leibiz-modal/
- 39.
Colossians 1: 15–17. She also cites a passage, which will be quoted below, in which Paul explains that God sent Christ ‘to make all men see what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things’ (Ephesians 3:9).
- 40.
There has been some scholarly attention given to the question of Conway’s sources. There is no doubt that Henry More, the Quakers, and Francis Mercury van Helmont influenced her, but her ideas seem very much her own in the end.
- 41.
John 3:16.
- 42.
‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him’ John 3: 16–18.
- 43.
Luke 10.25–38.
- 44.
V §6 (27). This passage suggests that the division between metaphysical and historic Christ might not be as clear as I have been claiming. For example, Conway suggests that the historic Christ brought his body ‘from heaven.’ However, the passage as a whole suggests that all she means to imply is that all the spirits and bodies constituting the third substance themselves are brought ‘from heaven’ in the sense that logos proforikos emanates them. There is no denying that Conway sometimes plays with the dual designation of the name, but textual evidence makes it clear that the historic Christ is neither God nor logos. For example, at the very beginning of the Principles, she insists that ‘in God there exists none of the passions … [f]or every passion is temporal having its beginning and end in time’ (I §5 (9)). In order to have passions, an entity must exist in time. Only creatures or modes of third substance exist in time (II §6 (14)). So, the historic Christ is such a creature.
- 45.
Conway has heterodox views about the Fall. There is insufficient space here to explicate those here, but her basic idea is that, before the Fall, all creatures were the same species and so the result of the Fall introduced radical differences among them. The move to diversity of being is consistent with justice. See VI §2–10 (29–38). It is noteworthy that roughly 40 years before Leibniz published his famous Theodicy (and coined the term ‘theodicy’) as an attempt to explain how divine goodness is consistent with creaturely suffering, Conway offers her own elegant solution to the problem of evil.
- 46.
Recent medievalists have argued that a ‘revolution of feeling’ occurred in the twelfth through thirteenth centuries, when devotional literature began to focus on ‘the Passion.’ See Jack Bennett, Poetry of the Passion: Studies in Twelve Centuries of English Verse (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982), 32. Between the twelfth and sixteenth centuries, Europe saw an increase in the richness and variety of ‘affective meditations’ on the passions. The meditator was supposed to feel compassion for Christ, which would increase the love and connection between herself and Christ. By contemplating suffering, the meditator would become more connected with the sufferer. Given our interests, it is especially significant that suffering is assumed to increase the sympathy and connection between sufferers. See Sarah Mcnamer, Affective Meditation and Invention of the Medieval Compassion (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010). For other important studies of the evolution in medieval Europe of a focus on the physicality of the body of Christ and related topics, see Caroline Walker Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987); and Sarah Beckwith, Christ’s Body: Identity, Culture, and Society in Late Medieval Writings (New York: Routledge, 1993).
- 47.
For more on Conway’s ‘moral perfectionism,’ see White, The Legacy of Anne Conway, Part I. There is insufficient room here to present the fascinating details of Conway’s perfectionism. Suffice it to say here that all creatures will eventually approach moral perfection and that this crucially depends on her metaphysics of sympathy.
- 48.
Conway insists that time ‘is nothing but successive motions and operations of creatures.’ It is continuous in that: ‘For just as no time is so great that it is not possible to conceive of a greater, so likewise no time is so small that a lesser may not be imagined’ (II §3 (13)). God cannot change and so is eternal. This eternity has ‘no times in it’ whereas ‘the eternity of creatures is nothing other than an infinity of times in which they were and always will be without end’ (II §5 (13–14)).
- 49.
Since the publication of Jonathan Israel’s Radical Enlightenment, a great deal of scholarly attention has been given to radical elements of the Enlightenment. Israel focuses on Spinoza as a source. But there are other forms of radicalism among the rationalists. Conway and the later Leibniz represent one such trend. See Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of the Modernity, 1650–1750, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).
- 50.
According to Conway, in paradise, ‘all creatures … in their primitive and original state were a certain species of human being’ (VI §4 (31)). God’s punishment led creatures to descend from their ‘original goodness’ to a state of ‘confusion’ (VII §3 (47)) so that ‘crassness and hardness of bodies arose after the Fall’ (VII S.1. (41)).
- 51.
Conway was particularly moved by the suffering caused by religious persecution and especially by the difficulties endured by the Quakers. See Hutton, Anne Conway, chapter 9, especially 179–81.
- 52.
I would like to thank Eileen O’Neill for trusting me, a non-expert, to write an essay on Conway. She and Marcy Lascano have been more than patient as I tried to make sense of the difficult details of Conway’s system. Both have made excellent comments on this paper. Eileen has been an inspiration to me – as she has been to so many of us – as a scholar and feminist. She has surely motivated me to try to understand something about women philosophers who were ‘left out’ of knowledge. I dedicate this paper to Eileen.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Mercer, C. (2019). Anne Conway’s Metaphysics of Sympathy. In: O’Neill, E., Lascano, M.P. (eds) Feminist History of Philosophy: The Recovery and Evaluation of Women’s Philosophical Thought. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18118-5_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18118-5_3
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-18117-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-18118-5
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)