Individual essences and moral responsibility in Anne Conway’s philosophy

Abstract

This paper aims to draw attention to the connection between two central metaphysical theses of Anne Conway’s philosophy: a) the fact that each creature possesses an individual essence that makes it possible to identify and distinguish it from all others, but that b) unfolds over time according to its own free action. In our view, for Conway, creatures acquire their individual essences through the choices they make. According to our interpretation, the free actions of each creature, together with the laws of divine justice, explain the series of modes of being that each creature displays through time. This series is what constitutes their individual essences, which God knows sub specie aeternitatis but which are nonetheless generated by each creature in the course of its temporal existence.