"The horse will surely change eventually into a human being”: considerations about the horse and its transmutation in Anne Conway

Abstract

In Principia philosophiae antiquissimae et recentissimae (1690) Anne Conway (1631-1679) develops her monistic metaphysics regarding creation, whose distinctive characteristic is transmutations for the individuals that compose it. In chapter VI of this posthumous work, Conway exemplifies this process of transmutation with the case of a horse, which changes, after death, into a human being. In this article I intend to analyze this example to show that it is not casual that the horse in question rises in the hierarchy of beings. To do this I will develop my interpretation of Conway’s philosophy, her understanding of created substance and its characteristics. In this way, I want to point out that her philosophy opens up the possibility of another understanding of non-human animals by human beings, even when the latter continue to occupy a prominent place in her proposal.