Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 Anne Finch, Viscountess Conway
- 2 A philosophical education
- 3 Religion and Anne Conway
- 4 Anne Conway and Henry More
- 5 John Finch, Thomas Hobbes and Margaret Cavendish
- 6 Experimental physick: Boyle, Greatrakes, Stubbe
- 7 Physic and philosophy: Van Helmont, father and son
- 8 Kabbalistical dialogues
- 9 Quakerism and George Keith
- 10 Last years
- 11 Legacy
- Bibliography
- Index
10 - Last years
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 Anne Finch, Viscountess Conway
- 2 A philosophical education
- 3 Religion and Anne Conway
- 4 Anne Conway and Henry More
- 5 John Finch, Thomas Hobbes and Margaret Cavendish
- 6 Experimental physick: Boyle, Greatrakes, Stubbe
- 7 Physic and philosophy: Van Helmont, father and son
- 8 Kabbalistical dialogues
- 9 Quakerism and George Keith
- 10 Last years
- 11 Legacy
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
‘though her Pains encreas'd, yet her Understanding diminish'd not’
The last four years of Anne Conway's life were years of intense intellectual activity, crucial in the genesis of her philosophical system. From what we have seen of her investigations into kabbalism and Quakerism, she was at the centre of a lively interchange of ideas among the little group in contact with her at Ragley. Here her immediate circle of Henry More and Van Helmont had been enlarged by the entry of the Quaker leader George Keith. As we have seen, her correspondence of these last years documents an intense interchange between members of this group. The debates are also registered in what might be described as a penumbra of texts produced by Keith, More and Van Helmont, which supplement the epistolary record of her intellectual pursuits. The writings of Keith, the scholia assiduously added by More to his published writings, as well as the publications of Van Helmont, reverberate with these dialogues at Ragley. Far from being the passive spectator of the intellectual drama going on around her, Anne Conway was centrally involved as director of and participant in their debates. From these writings, we can gather more about the main issues under discussion, enabling us to register the impact that she made and providing us with some means of assessing her debt to her interlocutors.
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- Anne ConwayA Woman Philosopher, pp. 203 - 219Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2004