Date of Award
1-1-2024
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
M.A. in Philosophy
First Advisor
Timothy P. Yenter
Second Advisor
Robert C. English
Third Advisor
Donovan E. Wishon
Relational Format
dissertation/thesis
Abstract
A common belief during the early modern period held that humans bear ethical relations only to creatures with whom we share the right kinds of similarity. A tradition attributed to René Descartes holds speciesist and anthropocentric views according to which nonhuman animals are mere automata who lack rational minds. Even Baruch Spinoza, who was much more radical in his Ethics, suggests creaturely similarity is restricted to beings with rationality. As such, Descartes and Spinoza conclude that lower beings cannot be morally evaluated for their actions and humans cannot be morally evaluated for their treatment of lower creatures. In her sole philosophical monograph, The Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy, Anne Conway (1631-1679) offers a radically different take on what responsibilities humans and other creatures have to the world. In what follows, this paper argues that Conway’s immaterialistic vitalism generates sufficient similarity relations to ground love and therefore ethical relations among all created finite beings. Since all created finite beings are spiritual and imbued with life and activity, everything falls into the sphere of normative evaluation. That is, lower creatures can be morally evaluated for their actions and humans can be morally evaluated for their treatment of lower creatures. To avoid a situation where the degree of our love is not affected by the object, and to support a common intuition that our ethical responsibilities differ based on which creature it is, I argue similarity exists on a sliding scale where the degree of our love and therefore degree of ethical responsibility depend on the degree of similarity. More similarity = more love = more ethical responsibilities. By elucidating Conway’s core ethical concept of love, this paper creates new possibilities for understanding her underlying moral theory.
Recommended Citation
Langer, Jeremiah Joseph, "The Metaphysics of Creaturely Love in the Philosophy of Anne Conway" (2024). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 2833.
https://egrove.olemiss.edu/etd/2833