The Legacy of Anne Conway (1631-1679): Reverberations from a Mystical Naturalism - Hardcover

White, Carol Wayne

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0791474658 ISBN 13: 9780791474655

Publisher: State University of New York Press, 2008

Synopsis

Explores the work of Anne Conway, whose philosophy of the natural world incorporated a spiritual vision.

Carol Wayne White introduces readers to the religious naturalism of the seventeenth-century English philosopher Anne Conway, whose work offers an analysis of the mechanical conception of nature. White shows how Conway's mystical cosmology provides an alternative to the dominant mechanistic models advanced by her leading male contemporaries, especially Descartes. She connects these philosophic impulses to Conway's late religious conversion to Quakerism, arguing that Quaker practical mysticism and its emphasis on equality within the natural order resonate with Conway's philosophic naturalism. White also explores Conway's continuity with and departure from current veins of religious naturalism, which entail an aesthetic ethical mandate seeking the increase of goodness in the world.

About this title

About the Author

Carol Wayne White is Associate Professor of Religion at Bucknell University and author of Poststructuralism, Feminism, and Religion: Triangulating Positions.

Edition details

• Publisher: State University of New York Press
• Publication date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0791474658
• ISBN 13: 9780791474655
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 170