Anne Conway’s philosophy has been categorized as “vitalism,” “vital monism,” “spiritualism,” “monistic spiritualism,” “immaterial vitalism,” and “antimaterialism.” While there is no doubt that she is a monist and a vitalist, problems arise with the categories of “spiritualism,” “immaterial vitalism,” and “antimaterialism.” Conway conceives of created substances as gross and fixed spirit, or rarefied and volatile matter. While interpreters agree that Conway’s “spirit” shares characteristics traditionally attributed to matter (e.g., extension, divisibility, impenetrability), and that she is critical of Henry More’s immaterial spirit, Conway’s spirit is still conceived as an immaterial soul-like or mind-like entity. I argue that Conway’s vitalism is material, and is best understood in the tradition of Renaissance vital naturalism. First, Conway does not criticize materialism per se, only mechanical materialism, which characterizes matter as lifeless. Her vitalism has to be materialistic in some sense, since only God is an immaterial substance. Second, Conway’s conceptions of matter and spirit, the language she uses, and the fact that she attributes thinking to extended, divisible, and impenetrable substances all place her within the tradition of Renaissance vital naturalism, wherein Bernardino Telesio, Tommaso Campanella, and Francis Bacon used “spirit” to account for all natural processes.
...More
Article
Emma Wilkins;
(2016)
‘Exploding’ Immaterial Substances: Margaret Cavendish’s Vitalist-Materialist Critique of Spirits
(/isis/citation/CBB644104711/)
Article
Rosengren, Cecilia;
(2003)
Form, materia och barocka figurer i Anne Conways naturfilosofi
(/isis/citation/CBB000500396/)
Article
Giglioni, Guido;
(2002)
Francis Glisson's Notion of confœderatio naturæ in the Context of Hylozoistic Corpuscularianism
(/isis/citation/CBB000770932/)
Essay Review
Wahrig-Schmidt, Bettina;
(1999)
Leviathan without air-pump - but with system
(/isis/citation/CBB000110320/)
Article
Paola Rumore;
(2020)
Priestley in Germany
(/isis/citation/CBB683415681/)
Article
Chisick, Harvey;
(2008)
Interpreting the Enlightenment
(/isis/citation/CBB000760731/)
Article
Wolters, Gereon;
(2001)
Hans Jonas' Philosophical Biology
(/isis/citation/CBB000320192/)
Article
Catherine Wilson;
(2016)
Hume and Vital Materialism
(/isis/citation/CBB576373771/)
Book
Charles Wolfe;
(2019)
La philosophie de la biologie avant la biologie: Une histoire du vitalisme
(/isis/citation/CBB816518126/)
Article
Jacqueline Broad;
(2018)
Conway and Charleton on the Intimate Presence of Souls in Bodies
(/isis/citation/CBB484625868/)
Chapter
Chang, Ku-Ming (Kevin);
(2007)
From Vitalistic Cosmos to Materialistic World: The Lineage of Johann Joachim Becher and Georg Ernst Stahl and the Shift of Early Modern Chymical Cosmology
(/isis/citation/CBB000773496/)
Chapter
Hallacker, Anja;
(2008)
On Angelic Bodies: Some Philosophical Discussions in the 17th Century
(/isis/citation/CBB001020246/)
Thesis
Byrne, David;
(2005)
Anne Conway: An Intellectual Portrait of a Seventeenth Century Viscountess
(/isis/citation/CBB001561884/)
Article
Emily Thomas;
(2017)
Time, Space, and Process in Anne Conway
(/isis/citation/CBB210647474/)
Article
Jonathan L. Shaheen;
(2021)
The Life of the Thrice Sensitive, Rational and Wise Animate Matter: Cavendish’s Animism
(/isis/citation/CBB509215550/)
Article
Cook, Harold J.;
(2002)
Body and Passions: Materialism and the Early Modern State
(/isis/citation/CBB000200085/)
Chapter
Garber, Daniel;
(2007)
Mécanisme et morale: la mort du corps et l'éternité de l'esprit chez Spinoza
(/isis/citation/CBB001022505/)
Chapter
Keller, Vera;
(2011)
How to Become a Seventeenth-Century Natural Philosopher: The Case of Cornelis Drebbel (1572--1633)
(/isis/citation/CBB001221244/)
Article
Marleen Rozemond;
(2016)
Descartes, Malebranche and Leibniz: Conceptions of Substance in Arguments for the Immateriality of the Soul
(/isis/citation/CBB117763212/)
Article
Anna Lisa Schino;
(2019)
Buona morte e suicidio nelle riflessioni di un libertino erudito
(/isis/citation/CBB901895357/)
Be the first to comment!