Anne Conway proposed monism whereby body is condensed spirit and spirit is volatile body

Evidence

ANNE CONWAY’S MONISTIC VITALISM. Whereas the Cartesians and the Cambridge Platonists, More and Cudworth, were dualists, Anne Conway, like Van Helmont, was a monist. In her philosophy, there was no essential difference between spirit and body and, moreover, the two were interconvertible. She distinguished her views sharply from those of Descartes and also from More and Cudworth on these points. Body was condensed spirit and spirit was subtle, volatile body. Body and spirit were not contrary entities, the first impenetrable and divisible, the other penetrable and indivisible, as More had held. Matter was not dead, “stupid,” and devoid of life, as Descartes and the Cambridge Platonists had thought. For Lady Conway, an intimate bond and organic unity existed between the two. Body and soul were of the same substance and nature, but soul was more excellent in such respects as swiftness, penetrability, and life. — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature, 950

Categorization

• XREF: Directly serves the reader’s stated purpose: Conway offers an alternate non-mechanistic, non-dualist cosmology the ecofeminist strand can oppose to Descartes — the live-vitalism counter-tradition within the Scientific Revolution already tracked in earlier chapters on vitalism. — connects to: Anne Conway was the most rigorous vitalist critic of Cartesian mechanism. — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology,…, 971; Leibniz’s conception of matter as dormant monads echoed Van Helmont’s and Conway’s organicism. — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology,…, 989; Conway held nature is a living body far more sublime than a machine — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology,…, 957
• DEFINE: Defines Conway’s monistic vitalism as the key conceptual alternative to Cartesian dualism — foundational terminology for the course.

Broader Connections

• Anne Conway was the most rigorous vitalist critic of Cartesian mechanism. #expands (0.90) — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature, 971
• Leibniz’s conception of matter as dormant monads echoed Van Helmont’s and Conway’s organicism. #corroborates (0.85) — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature, 989