Anne Conway: The seventeenth-century philosopher who argued that all matter is alive.

Ideas & Philosophy · Published 3 October 2026 Swipe more like this →

In short: While her contemporaries debated dead, mechanical matter, Anne Conway proposed a radical alternative: the universe is a single, living substance. Despite suffering from debilitating migraines that left her bedridden, she became one of the most original thinkers of her time, influencing major philosophers and challenging the dualism of her era.

Born in 1631, Anne Conway was an English philosopher whose work emerged from the Cambridge Platonist tradition. Her intellectual journey was defined by a rejection of Cartesian dualism, which separated the world into mind and body. Instead, Conway argued for a form of substance monism, asserting that everything in existence is fundamentally the same substance. Crucially, she broke from the mechanists of her day by claiming that matter is not passive or inert. To Conway, all matter possesses vitality, perception, and the capacity for self-motion.

Her magnum opus, The Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy, written around 1677, outlines a universe defined by continuous divine creation. She categorized existence into three levels: God, Christ, and 'Creatures,' distinguishing them by their capacity for change and perfectibility. This interconnected view of life was shaped by her wide-ranging interests, which included the Lurianic Kabbalah and Quakerism. Scholars have suggested that her conversion to Quakerism was influenced by the parallels she drew between their beliefs and her own philosophical insights, as well as her identification with the physical suffering faced by the Quakers.

Conway’s life was marked by severe, chronic migraines that began when she was twelve. Despite consulting the era's most renowned physicians—including William Harvey and Robert Boyle—and undergoing extreme treatments, she found no relief. This physical hardship forced her to conduct her studies from home, where she maintained a vibrant intellectual life through extensive correspondence with thinkers like Henry More and Franciscus Mercurius van Helmont. Though her influence on Gottfried Leibniz remains a subject of academic debate, she is remembered by historians like Hugh Trevor-Roper as England's greatest female philosopher.

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