The Legacy of Anne Conway (1631-1679): Reverberations from a Mystical Naturalism

Explores the work of Anne Conway, whose philosophy of the natural world incorporated a spiritual vision.

Carol Wayne White introduces readers to the religious naturalism of the seventeenth-century English philosopher Anne Conway, whose work offers an analysis of the mechanical conception of nature. White shows how Conway’s mystical cosmology provides an alternative to the dominant mechanistic models advanced by her leading male contemporaries, especially Descartes. She connects these philosophic impulses to Conway’s late religious conversion to Quakerism, arguing that Quaker practical mysticism and its emphasis on equality within the natural order resonate with Conway’s philosophic naturalism. White also explores Conway’s continuity with and departure from current veins of religious naturalism, which entail an aesthetic ethical mandate seeking the increase of goodness in the world.