Under Construction @ Keele 2016 Volume 1 Issue 1 | Page 29

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Recovering the Philosophy of Anne Conway: 17th Century Rationalist
Jonathan Head
(PhD Philosophy, Keele University)

The recent wide-ranging project of focusing on the role of women in the
history of philosophy has led to a resurgence of interest in Anne Conway,
a 17th century rationalist whose philosophical system is a beguiling mix of
Christianity, Judaism and Renaissance philosophy. This paper introduces
some of the most striking aspects of her remarkable life and thought.

Keywords: Anne Conway, Renaissance, Christianity, History of Philosophy, Women

When we teach history, we must, out of necessity, be selective. In attempting to
convey how things progressed, be it in the realms of events or ideas, some valuejudgements must come into play. After all, there is a large amount of history to
choose from. Thus the specialist, in whatever area they may be, must pick out
certain themes, emphasise particular details, and leave out the inessential in order to
give an impressionistic image of what has happened. Such difficulties face the
historian of philosophy, as much as the historian who deals with more concrete
matters, and in response we have made our selection of key philosophers and ideas
that form the part of any ‘decent’ philosophical education. Traditionally, this selection,
leading up to the dawn of the 20th century, has encompassed a few ancient Greeks
(for example, Plato and Aristotle), some scholastics from the development of
Christian philosophical theology (Augustine and Aquinas), and a number of scholars
drawn from Western Europe through the 17th-19th centuries (including Descartes,
Locke, Hume, Kant, and Nietzsche). This selection is based on the presumption that
confining one’s attention to such key thinkers will give enough information for a good
general grasp of the history of philosophy, enabling one to focus on contemporary
issues with the widest requisite historical context in mind.
However, this orthodoxy has recently been challenged. The challenge begins
with a simple observation; namely, that all of the philosophers named in the previous
paragraph are white males drawn from European traditions. This fact raises a
number of questions, such as whether the orthodox view of what is significant in the