Vitalism and panpsychism in the philosophy of Anne Conway

Abstract

ABSTRACTAnne Conway (1631–1679) is often described as a vitalist. Scholars typically take this to mean that Conway considers life to be ubiquitous throughout the world. While Conway is indeed a vitalist in this sense, I argue that she is also committed to a stronger view: namely, the panpsychist view that mental capacities are ubiquitous and fundamental in creation. Reading Conway as a panpsychist highlights several aspects of her philosophy that deserve further attention, especially her accounts of emanative causation and universal perfectibility. There are also historical benefits to interpreting Conway as a panpsychist. Through its history, ‘vitalism’ has often been used to describe philosophies that draw a sharp line between living and non-living nature; surely, Conway is not a vitalist in this way. Moreover, some of Conway’s contemporaries (for instance, Ralph Cudworth and Henry More) are sometimes regarded as vitalists, but were not panpsychists. It is important to distinguish between Conway’s vitalism and her version of panpsychism and to add a term like ‘panpsychism’ to the interpretive lexicon. Otherwise, we run the risk of undervaluing Conway’s originality within her own context and beyond.KEYWORDS: Anne Conwayseventeenth-century metaphysicspanpsychismvitalism AcknowledgementsThanks to Christia Mercer, Russell Jones, Martin Montminy, Alison Springle, and two anonymous referees for their helpful comments and/or conversation regarding several versions of this paper.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 Nicolson (Conway Letters) offered one of the first modern engagements with Conway’s thought. Contributions from Merchant followed (“The Vitalism of Anne Conway”, “The Vitalism of Van Helmont”), but it was only with the appearance of Hutton’s landmark intellectual biography (Anne Conway) that historians of philosophy began to take significant interest in Conway.2 See, for instance, Borcherding (“Loving the Body”, “Nothing Is Simply One Thing”, “A Most Subtle Matter”), Head (Philosophy of Anne Conway, especially Chapters 2 and 7), Hutton (Anne Conway), Lascano (Metaphysics), McRobert (“Conway’s Vitalism”), Merchant (“The Vitalism of Anne Conway”), Rusu (“Exceptional Vitalism”), and White (Legacy). White’s text recognizes the many meanings of ‘vitalism’ throughout the centuries (see especially Chapter 4). Head describes Conway’s vitalism as a view about the ubiquity of life in creation but offers an alternative account of “life” as “the atemporal or successive existence of a unified system” (Head, Philosophy of Anne Conway, 156).3 This gloss is not a technical analysis of the Greek.4 Many more comprehensive introductions to Conway’s philosophy are available. See, e.g. Broad (Women Philosophers), Hutton (Anne Conway), Lascano (Metaphysics), Mercer (“Conway’s Metaphysics of Sympathy”, “Conway’s Response to Cartesianism”), and Mercer and Branscum (“Anne Conway”).5 I know of one other author – Andrew Fyffe (“A Panpsychist Interpretation”) – who reads Conway as a panpsychist. Our work was developed independently, and our arguments differ (Fyffe claims that Conway’s notion of “spirit” is coextensive with consciousness). However, he likewise mentions the scholarly emphasis on vitalism.6 Conway quotations are from the forthcoming translation of the Principles by Arlig, Mercer, and Reid. I cite by chapter, section number, and subsection as provided in the forthcoming translation. Thanks to the translators for their permission to utilize the text.7 Modified from a definition of William Seager’s (“Introduction: A Panpsychist Manifesto”, 1).8 For more on Conway’s Platonist influences, see Hutton (Anne Conway, especially Chapter 4) and Mercer (“Platonism in Early Modern Natural Philosophy”, “Seventeenth-Century Universal Sympathy”). But cf. Rusu (“Exceptional Vitalism”).9 See the introduction by Coudert and Corse to Conway (Principles), hereafter ‘CC’, for further discussion on the provenance of the text. See Hutton (“Seventeenth-Century Scientific Thought”) for more on Conway’s relationship to alchemical-medical thought.10 See Principles Chapter 3, throughout.11 For more on metempsychosis, see Givens (When Souls Had Wings). See also Greene (“Preexistence”), who discusses Conway and Van Helmont. For a treatment of kabbalistic concepts in Conway, see CC, xviii–xxii. Coudert (“Kabbalist Nightmare”) also treats the impact of the Kabbalah on Conway’s circle. General histories of the Kabbalah include, e.g., Garb (A History of Kabbalah), Scholem (On the Kabbalah).12 See Ludlow (“Universal Salvation”) for a discussion of seventeenth-century universalism that incorporates Conway and notes the prevalence of universalism among the Cambridge Platonists, which Ludlow traces to Origenism.13 I use ‘matter’ and ‘body’ interchangeably, as Conway does (see 7.2).14 Conway’s claim that “the whole of creation is always only one substance or entity” has led commentators to call her a ‘monist’ (7.4 [x]). However, scholars disagree about the kind of monism Conway presents. See, e.g., Borcherding (“A Most Subtle Matter”), Gordon-Roth (“What Kind of Monist?”), Grey (“Ontological Objection”), Lascano (Metaphysics), Mercer (“Platonism in Early Modern Natural Philosophy”, “Seventeenth-Century Universal Sympathy”), and Thomas (“Conway as a Priority Monist”). One issue concerns the term ‘monism’, which sometimes means ontologically plural individuals share the same kind of nature (substance/type monism) and sometimes means there is numerically one entity in existence (existence/token monism). I do not comment here on the monism debate.15 Panpsychism is associated with relatively recent philosophical debates, but the view has persisted for millennia. See Skrbina (Panpsychism in the West) for an introduction to panpsychism in the Western context.16 I am open to attributing a version of panprotopsychism to Conway because she does not claim that all mental capacities are actualized in all creatures. But see note 18 below.17 The seventeenth-century translation gives ‘knowledge’ for forms of perceptio, translated in the Arlig and CC editions as ‘perception’. See, e.g., Loptson, Principles, 108, 196.18 I believe that perfectibility requires some basic mental capacities always to be actualized in creation, but will not defend the claim due to space constraints. In God's case, mental capacities are always fully actualized.19 “[I]t is not just the earth and earthly things that can be comprehended under time and its laws [i.e., are part of creation], but also the Sun, Moon, and stars, and indeed every visible part of the world along with many that are invisible” (5.7 [ii]).20 As Mercer shows in the similar case of Leibniz, emanation is indebted to the Platonist tradition. See Mercer (Leibniz’s Metaphysics, especially Chapter 5; “Platonism at the Core of Leibniz’s Philosophy”). See also O’Neill (“Influxus Physicus”) and Schliesser (“Newtonian Emanation”). Conway was probably familiar with Plotinus (see Henry More’s unpublished preface to the Principles, printed in CC).21 ‘Spinozism’ was understood in the period as a general form of atheism that collapsed the distinction between God and creation. See Thomson, Bodies of Thought, 51–53.22 Pugliese (“Monism and Individuation”) sheds light on this distinction.23 Hutton (Anne Conway, 224) suggests otherwise.24 See also: “[I]f it is decided … that there is another cause of love, … namely, goodness … I reply: it should indeed be conceded that goodness is a great – indeed, the greatest – cause of love … However, this goodness is not distinct from the previous causes already posited, but is comprehended in them” (7.3 [v]).25 The Latin correlate of ‘or’ is the non-exclusive ‘vel’: when Conway writes “vita vel perceptione”, we can interpret her as saying ‘life, or if you prefer, perception’ (where the two terms are interchangeable) (Loptson, Principles, 108).26 The Latin, which reads “sub quo comprehendo capacitatem omnium modorum sentiendi, perceptionisque & cognitionis, nec non amoris”, corroborates my interpretation (Loptson, Principles, 139). In one later passage (9.6 [iii]), Conway apparently denies the relationship between life and wisdom; However, the relevant sentence is grammatically problematic in the Latin, inconsistent with the rest of the text, and may even be a misprint. See the note in the forthcoming translation.27 See Section 1 above. Conway’s account of creaturely composition is beyond the scope of this paper. For more on composition and identity through time, see Thomas (“Conway on Identity”). Lascano (Metaphysics, 94–98) offers a useful account of composition and metempsychosis.28 For a classic study of the “Great Chain of Being”, see Lovejoy (The Great Chain of Being). For more on the relationship between Conway’s notion of species and her ethics, see Grey (“Species and the Good”).29 “[J]ust as all the punishments that are inflicted upon creatures by God have a certain proportionality to their sins, so they all – even the worst of them – tend toward good and restoration” (6.10 [iii]).30 On More’s eventual dualism and his changing views on mechanism, see Reid (Metaphysics of Henry More, especially Chapters 7 and 8). On Cudworth’s view, see Allen (“Mind, Body, and Plastic Nature”). Duncan discusses both in Materialism, especially Chapter 3.31 Conway distinguishes between mechanical and vital motion and states that the latter is “the proper motion” of a creature (9.9 [vii]). She uses the example of a thrown stone to illustrate “violent” mechanical motion and immediately contrasts this with “every motion that proceeds from the proper life and will of a creature”, indicating that even stones have “proper” motions that depend upon mental capacities like willing.32 See Branscum, “Matter’s ‘Most Noble Attribute’”, especially Chapter 2.33 Hutton (Anne Conway, 92) claims Conway read both Ficino and Plotinus under More’s tutelage.34 See, e.g., More (Conjectura Cabbalistica, 138) and Cudworth (True Intellectual System (TIS), 756, 763–764, 884). The above claims are true at least of More’s mature works. See More’s letter to Descartes dated July 23, 1649 for More’s earlier view. See also Hutton (“‘Plastick Powers’”) and Reid (Metaphysics of Henry More).35 See, e.g., Cudworth (TIS, 763–764) and More (Immortality, 75–89). See also Henry (“Matter of Souls”).36 See Ficino (Plato’s Symposium, especially Chapter III, 137) for the inertness claim. Ficino’s view is nuanced in that he suggests body may be capable of love. See Plato’s Symposium, Chapter III, 129.37 Problems generated by panpsychism will also need to be considered.38 See Hutton (“Seventeenth-Century Scientific Thought”, Anne Conway) and Popkin (“Spiritualist Cosmologies”). See Borcherding (“Loving the Body”, “A Most Subtle Matter”), Detlefsen (“Individual Human Mind”), Grey (“Ontological Objection”), and Lascano (“Bodies”) for discussions of Conway’s anti-dualism and the role of matter in creation. See Broad (Women Philosophers), who argues that Conway’s “spiritualism” resembles Margaret Cavendish’s “materialism”. Rozemond and Simmons (“It’s All Alive!”) make a similar point.39 “If it [spirit] were altogether spirit and in no way body, why does it need such different corporeal organs, which differ from its nature so greatly?” (CC 8.1, 57) Cf. the forthcoming translation: “Were that thing so entirely a spirit, and in no way corporeal, why would it need such a variety of corporeal organs that so greatly differ from it in their nature?” (8.1 [iv]).40 Mercer (“Conway’s Response to Cartesianism”) makes this point. But see Wolfe (Materialism, especially Chapter 4) and Wunderlich (“Varieties of early modern materialism”) for accounts of living matter in the early modern period.41 Authors like Borcherding (“A Most Subtle Matter”), Branscum (“Matter’s ‘Most Noble Attribute’”), Broad (Women Philosophers), Lascano (Metaphysics), and Rozemond and Simmons (“It’s All Alive!”) are already taking this approach.42 It may also be worth considering Conway in relation to Cudworth’s “hylozoick atheism”. See Cudworth, TIS, especially Book I, Chapters II and III.43 Laura Georgescu (“Cavendish on Life”) challenges the ‘vitalism’ label in Cavendish’s case on similar grounds. Thanks to an anonymous referee for this citation.44 See Driesch (Vitalism) and Wolfe (“Varieties of Vital Materialism”, “Vitalism”) on the range of views captured by the label. Wolfe (“Vitalism”) specifically excludes Conway from ‘vitalism’ because she does not problematize life.45 See Canguilhem: “Classical vitalism (that of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries) … maintain[s] a relation to animism … , which is the theory according to which the life of the animal body depends on the existence and activity of a soul … acting on the body as one substance on another, from which it is ontologically distinct” (Knowledge of Life, 70). This implies (contra Conway) a distinction between living and non-living beings and suggests that the vital aspect of living beings is distinct from the inert or mechanistic aspect. The vitalism-animism relationship is complex and cannot be addressed here.46 In 9.9 Conway discusses “merely” mechanical motion and vital motion, though she rejects the distinction between living and non-living matter.47 For discussion of the Cambridge Platonists’ distinction between life or activity and mind, see Reid (“Material and Immaterial Substance”).48 See Henry (“Matter of Souls”) and Thomson (Bodies of Thought) on the importance of this debate in seventeenth-century England.