Lady Anne Conway (1631-79), a forerunner of theosophy, combined Kabbalah and Quaker spirituality to combat what she thought were the most pernicious philosophies of her time: the Mind-Body dualism of Descartes, the mechanistic-materialism of Hobbes and the Pantheism of Spinoza. Her religious-philosophy understood reality as a continuum from God to Creation in which our realm was an infinite field of spiritual particles all striving toward perfection – a direct influence on Leibniz’s Monads and contemporary Ontological Vitalism and Panpsychism.
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Recommended Readings:
Conway – The Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy – 978-0521479042
Conway – Principia philosophiae antiquissimae & recentissimae – https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_y6hbDBQqTiQC/page/n3/mode/2up
Hutton – Anne Conway: A Woman Philosopher – 978-0521109819
Nicolson – The Conway Letters – 978-0198248767
