How did Anne Conway derive her notion of a monad from the Kabbalah?

What was Anne Conway philosophy?

Anne Conway’s treatise is a work of Platonist metaphysics in which she derives her system of philosophy from the existence and attributes of God. The framework of Conway’s system is a tripartite ontological hierarchy of “species”, the highest of which is God, the source of all being.

Who influenced Anne Conway?

Her half-brother, John Finch, who encouraged her interests in philosophy and theology, introduced Anne to the Cambridge Platonist Henry More, who was one of John’s tutors at Christ’s College, Cambridge.

What did Anne Conway accomplish?

Anne Conway’s accomplishments as a student of philosophy and theology, her mastery of the intricate doctrines of the Lurianic Kabbalah, and her authorship of a treatise criticizing Descartes, Hobbes, and Spinoza wildly exceeded the capacities of all but a tiny fraction of her female contemporaries.

What are the three species of being for Anne Conway?

Early in The Principles (1996), we learn that there are just three species in Conway’s ontology: God, Christ, and creatures. According to Conway, God is the eternal, unchanging creator who admits of no corporeality. God is also omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, and omnibenevolent.

Is Anne Conway a dualist?

Abstract. Anne Conway disagrees with substance dualism, the thesis that minds and bodies differ in nature or essence. Instead, she holds that “the distinction between spirit and body is only modal and incremental, not essential and substantial” (CP 6.11, 40).

What did Anne Conway study?

Of Anne Conway’s remarkable philosophical education, much more is known. Thanks to her brother, who was his pupil at Christ’s College, University of Cambridge, More agreed to give her instruction in philosophy. Since, as a woman, she was debarred from attending the university, he instructed her by letter.

What is Cartesian matter?

Cartesians adopted an ontological dualism of two finite substances, mind (spirit or soul) and matter. The essence of mind is self-conscious thinking; the essence of matter is extension in three dimensions. God is a third, infinite substance, whose essence is necessary existence.

What is Platonic view?

Platonism is the view that there exist such things as abstract objects — where an abstract object is an object that does not exist in space or time and which is therefore entirely non-physical and non-mental.

Who said to be is to be perceived?

4. Idealism and Immaterialism. Berkeley’s famous principle is esse is percipi, to be is to be perceived. Berkeley was an idealist.

Is dualism a theory?

In the philosophy of mind, dualism is the theory that the mental and the physical – or mind and body or mind and brain – are, in some sense, radically different kinds of thing.

What religion was Margaret Cavendish?

Although Cavendish claimed orthodoxy and Anglicanism, she was nevertheless a proponent of a negative theology that anticipated the more natural religion of the eighteenth-century Deists.

What is dualism Descartes?

Substance dualism, or Cartesian dualism, most famously defended by René Descartes, argues that there are two kinds of foundation: mental and physical. This philosophy states that the mental can exist outside of the body, and the body cannot think.

Was Leibniz a monist?

Leibniz fought against the Cartesian dualist system in his Monadology and instead opted for a monist idealism (since substances are all unextended). However, Leibniz was a pluralist in the sense that substances are disseminated in the world in an infinite number.

What did Thomas Hobbes contribute?

His enduring contribution was as a political philosopher who justified wide-ranging government powers on the basis of the self-interested consent of citizens. In Hobbes’s social contract, the many trade liberty for safety.

What is the main philosophy of Thomas Hobbes?

His political philosophy is chiefly concerned with the way in which government must be organized in order to avoid civil war. It therefore encompasses a view of the typical causes of civil war, all of which are represented in Behemoth; or, The Long Parliament (1679), his history of the English Civil Wars.

Did Hobbes believe in God?

Hobbes seems to have believed in ‘God’, perhaps in a God who wanted to be worshipped; he certainly disapproved of most ‘religion’, including virtually all forms of Christianity. Surprisingly few of his earliest and best-informed readers accused him of denying God’s existence.

What is the basic theory of Thomas Hobbes?

Throughout his life, Hobbes believed that the only true and correct form of government was the absolute monarchy. He argued this most forcefully in his landmark work, Leviathan. This belief stemmed from the central tenet of Hobbes’ natural philosophy that human beings are, at their core, selfish creatures.

What influenced Hobbes to write Leviathan?

Leviathan, Hobbes’s most important work and one of the most influential philosophical texts produced during the seventeenth century, was written partly as a response to the fear Hobbes experienced during the political turmoil of the English Civil Wars.

How are John Locke and Hobbes different?

Locke believed that we have the right to life as well as the right to just and impartial protection of our property. Any violation of the social contract would one in a state of war with his fellow countrymen. Conversely, Hobbes believed that if you simply do what you are told, you are safe.

Did Hobbes believe in natural rights?

Hobbes asserted that the people agreed among themselves to “lay down” their natural rights of equality and freedom and give absolute power to a sovereign. The sovereign, created by the people, might be a person or a group.

Can there be natural law without God?

Hittinger then sees the existence of natural law as the (perhaps, unacknowledged) ground for the possibility of all moral discourse, and since natural law cannot be without God, he would answer our larger question quite differently from my Menckeneanizing response.

Was Thomas Hobbes a utilitarian?

However, systematic study shows that Hobbes’s political and legal philosophy has a sophisticated underlying unity and coherence. At the heart of this unity is Hobbes’s utilitarian consequentialist ethic, which remarkably anticipates the major strands of contemporary consequentialism.

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What were Cicero’s original contributions to philosophy? Why does the word “atheism” exist? Determining the soundness of arguments? Can Hegel’s theory of logic be formalized? Source of a Russell quote about purpose and meaninglessness? Does Descartes prove that he isn’t dreaming? Is there another state besides existence and nonexistence? Logic Question: Can a logically valid argument have a logically false conclusion? The opposite of ‘x’? How do people justify and empathize towards negative actions?