Anne Conway (1631-1679)

Jonathan Head looks at the life and thoughts of an early animal equaliser.

- Jonathan Head

Could I be reborn as a horse in a future life? Or could I have been a horse in a past life? These might seem like strange questions to some, but they were nevertheless answered in the affirmative by the seventeenth-century philosopher Anne Conway. In her only published work, Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy (1690), Conway proposed a radical view of nature that’s only now in the process of being rediscovered.

Life, Briefly

Anne Finch was born into a wealthy family in London in 1631. She was the daughter of Sir Heneage Finch, a former Speaker of the House of Commons, and Elizabeth (nee Cradock). Little is known of her childhood, but from her early correspondence in young adulthood it appears that she had a voracious intellectual curiosity, with wide-ranging interests in philosophy, religion, science, and languages. In 1650, she began exchanging letters with the Cambridge philosopher Henry More, with whom she discussed numerous topics, including the new philosophy of René Descartes and the Platonism that More himself espoused. Anne and More had been introduced through her half-brother, John Finch, who had studied under More at Cambridge. More’s role as a philosophical mentor for Anne soon developed into that of a close friend, and they would remain in frequent contact for the rest of her life.

In 1651 Anne married Edward Conway, who would later be the First Earl of Conway, and soon settled at his home of Ragley Hall in Warwickshire. Their only child, Heneage, died of smallpox in 1660, aged only two.