Emanuele Costa

“Transcendence and Immanence in Anne Conway”

in L. Bastos Andrade and R. Casales Garcia (eds.)
Dios y la filosofía. Una aproximación histórica al problema de la trascendencia
Vol. 2. De la modernidad a la actualidad.

N.B.: THIS IS A DRAFT OF AN ACCEPTED CHAPTER, STILL SUBJECT TO EDITORIAL

REVISIONS. PLEASE DO NOT QUOTE WITHOUT PERMISSION

In this chapter, I examine the metaphysics elaborated by Viscountess Anne Finch Conway in the
effort of determining the meaning she assigned to the notions of transcendence and immanence. In
the Early Modern period, her philosophy is one of the most original attempts towards an integration
of notions deriving from Lurianic Kabbalah and Sufism into debates stemming from the confrontation
of mainstream Catholicism and Protestantism with their most heterodox cognates, such as Quakerism.
Responding to these variegated influences, Conway elaborated a unique response to the problem of
transcendence, immanence, and the presence of God in the world.
In the pre-critical period, philosophical transcendence possesses a twofold meaning, as John Lachs
reminded us. The first meaning, which is epistemological, points to the possibility of transcending,
i.e., going beyond “the conditions revealed in our daily experience” in the course of our path to
knowledge.1 The second possible meaning of transcendence, instead, is ontological. It regards the
existence of being which is not homogeneous with the entia which we encounter in our experience.
As it is plain to see, however, the terms ‘immanent’ and ‘transcendent’ are demonstrative; just like
‘this’ and ‘that’, they contain little meaning beyond the identification of a point of view relative to
the thinker that thinks them, and the homogeneity or heterogeneity of the object of her knowledge. In
this chapter, at any rate, I shall focus exclusively on the second meaning, which is ontological or
metaphysical transcendence. Within this realm, I distinguish three possibilities for transcendence: the
first is topological, and relative to matters of place. God would therefore be transcendent by existing
in a place altogether different than creatures. The second possibility sees transcendence as a
substantial distinction, which would ascertain God’s transcendence because of a distinction between
spirit and matter. Finally, the third possibility is the establishment of transcendence through the
manner of existing, i.e., a tropological difference. As I shall conclude, for Conway God is only
transcendent in this latter sense.
One more point is to be made before beginning in earnest an analysis of Conway’s philosophy. That
is, despite the strong preference statistically accorded by transcendent-leaning metaphysicians to
aprioristic methodology, I would like to note here that a priori reasoning and transcendent conclusions
stand in orthogonal positions. Thus, it is possible to conclude for the existence of conditions of being
radically differing from ours by observing our own conditions (e.g., through an a posteriori proof of
the existence of a transcendent God). Conversely, it is possible to argue against the heterogeneity of
being through an exclusive use of a priori argumentation (e.g., the affirmation of a Spinozian univocal

1
J. Lachs, “Transcendence in Philosophy and in Everyday Life”, The Journal of Speculative Philosophy 11:4 (1997),
248.
Nature rests solely on the meaning assigned to definitions such as “cause of itself”, “infinite”, and
“eternal”).
This is a key point to keep in mind when analyzing Anne Conway’s thought, since her methodology
brings forward an admixture of a priori and a posteriori reasoning, the latter largely relying on her
understanding of advancement in contemporary science and natural philosophy. In the Early Modern
era, empiricist and rationalist philosophers alike were attempting to grapple with the new discoveries
in natural science and with the widespread rejection of Scholastic theories, while safeguarding the
belief in a transcendent God.
Conway’s masterpiece (and only text published under her name), The Principles of the Most Ancient
and Modern Philosophy, is designed as a rebuttal to some of the philosophical doctrines that she
found most pernicious in her era, including those of Descartes, Spinoza, and Hobbes. What all these
philosophers had in common, according to Conway, is that they misunderstood the true nature of the
relationship between body and spirit, therefore polluting their understanding of God, Christ, and
Nature, as well.
For this reason, the Principles open with a chapter dedicated to God and his attributes. After positing
God’s unity and spirituality (i.e., in God there is no matter and no mereological separation), Conway
goes on to argue that “[God] is in a true and real sense an essence or substance distinct from his
creatures” (PI.S3).2 Prima facie, this line could suggest a firm axiomatization of God’s transcendence.
However, on a closer look, all the above proposition affirms is God’s numerical identity, as a distinct
substance that is not the same substance as the creatures. The definition of real distinction, in the
Early Modern period, is tantamount to the possibility of one of the terms of the distinction being
realized independently of the other (e.g., Descartes posits a real distinction between mind and body).
Specifically, in this passage, Conway is arguing against the possibility of a part-whole pantheism, a
metaphysical doctrine in which God is realized through creatures as his parts. “They are not parts of
him or changeable into him, just as he is not changeable into them” (PI.S3), Conway argues, a curious
remark that shall acquire more significance once we have examined her monistic doctrine of
metamorphosis or transmutation. But for the present moment, let it suffice to acknowledge Conway’s
refusal to admit creatures into divinity as parts, and her assertion of the real distinction between God
and creatures.
However, this section of the Principles continues with an odd phrasing, clearly aimed at establishing
God’s omnipresence: “[God is] not divided or separate from [the creatures], but present in everything
most closely and intimately in the highest degree” (PI.S3). The idea of the creatures’ intimate
participation in God is certainly not heterodox, with respect to Christianity. consider for example the
manner in which Aquinas describes God’s existence in things, the subject-matter of Quaestio VIII of
his Summa Theologiae. “As long as a thing has being, God must be present to it, according to its
mode of being. But being is innermost in each thing and most fundamentally inherent in all
things...Hence it must be that God is in all things, and most intimately [intime]” (ST I, q8, art.1, resp.).
Nonetheless, Conway’s specific take on God’s intimate presence certainly is a result of her
involvement with some form of Kabbalah. Let us examine, as an example, her discussion of the
infinity of the creation (through an infinite number of actualized worlds), in Chapter III.
In PIII.S6, Conway attacks those who claim that God’s creation is finite, either in number or in
extension. God’s infinite power, according to Conway, demands that “an infinity of worlds or
2
All passages from Conway’s Principles are cited by means of the following notation: P, followed by the chapter number
in roman numerals, followed by the section number preceded by a capital S or an A, if the quote is taken from the
Annotations. All quotes are from the 1996 Cambridge edition curated by A.P. Coudert and T. Corse.
creatures was made by God” (as she had already established in PIII.S4). The mistake of denying the
infinity of creation necessarily a denial of God’s very infinity, in Conway’s eyes. The only available
alternative for her opposers seems to be, in fact, to argue that God exceeds beyond any universe.
However, for Conway, existence outside the universe is tantamount to existence in so-called
imaginary places: her argument proceeds as follows. If a given space exists, is either real or merely
“an idle conceit of the brain” (PIII.S7). If the spaces beyond our universe are entirely imaginary
spaces, then God surely could not exist in them. But if they are real, then they must be creatures of
God (since everything that is not God must be a creature). Moreover, she argues, “God works either
in these spaces or not. If not, God is not there, for wherever he is, there he works for it is in his nature
to act…God always works, and his work is to create and to give being to creatures” (PIII.S7). This
argument is a particularly interesting take on the subject of the infinity of the world. It begins with
the implicit assumption that the universe must be the place of God, and it rightfully concludes that
such place cannot be but infinite, on pain of reflecting its eventual finitude on God, too.
However, her unspoken assumption that God must have a place, and that such place must be a created
space, is far from neutral. Gauged within the debate at hand – between immanence and transcendence
– Conway’s doctrine effectively morphs the results, refusing the question in traditional Christian
terms, which would place God in a transcendent realm of being. Instead, she introduces the
Kabbalistic notion of Aensoph (sic), the infinite and limitless aspect of God. Leaving aside the
question regarding the accuracy of her understanding of Kabbalah, it is interesting to highlight how
Conway demands that God must exist in a created space, although no such space can be said to
contain him, and “no space coincides with God” (PIII.S7). Thus, we must reject the first and most
natural meaning of transcendence as a demonstrative topological term, since for Conway creator and
creation exist in the same place.
Let us now move to the second possible meaning of transcendence, that which presupposes an
essential distinction based on the kind of being that God and creatures respectively enjoy. An intuitive
understanding of this doctrine would remark how God’s exclusive spirituality is radically different in
kind, from the material existence of creatures, which are – at best – an admixture of matter and spirit.
Indeed, this route to transcendence had been selected by plenty of metaphysicians before Conway,
despite its technical problems (such as Descartes’ difficulties with justifying the union of mind and
body as two different substances; or the universal hylomorphism that implied the existence of a
‘spiritual matter’, subject of a heated debate during the Middle Ages).
However, Conway’s metaphysics opposes a firm refusal to this kind of distinction. Her philosophy
implies a homogenous monism of existing substances. Conway, in fact, “uses Paul to argue that all
aspects of creation are inherently spiritual, because they all partake of the same divine principle”.3 In
this sense, Conway’s philosophy can be described as a spiritual monism, radically opposed to
Cartesian dualism. While she does admit that “every creature whatsoever contains many spirits and
bodies” (PVI.S11), her understanding of corporeality indicates that body is not a primary component
of creation. Originally, all creatures existed in spirit only; “all the crassness of visible bodies comes
from the fall of the spirits from their original states” (PVII.S1). The change from spiritual to material
is equated by Conway to the mutation from good to evil.
Thus, spirit and body, which are both present in every visible creature, represent respectively a “more
active and a more passive principle” of being (PVI.S11). This strategy implies a graduality of being
and will be reprised by Leibniz later. The most significant feature of this metaphysical framework is

3
K. Felter, “Body, Spirit and Gender in Anne Conway”, in Origen’s Philosophy of Freedom in Early Modern Times, ed.
A. Fürst (Münster: Aschendorff Verlag, 2020), 133.
that body and spirit are not distinguished by an essential or substantial difference. Their distinction is
“only modal and incremental” (PVI.S11). For our purposes in this chapter, it is paramount to
recognize that the distinction of body and spirit cannot therefore ground the transcendent distinction
between God and creatures, unless one is prepared to acknowledge that divinity and non-divinity are
distinct only by mode and accident.
Conway is decidedly aware of this possible inference, as well. As we have seen before, she equates
spirituality with goodness and materiality with evil, in what can be described as a “folk-Platonist”
move. However, she maintains that goodness and evil are not equally opposed to each other as
Manichean first principles, and that “in the very nature of things there are limits to evil, but none to
goodness” (PVII.S1). Therefore, while God enjoys an infinite goodness and therefore an infinite
spirituality, materiality and evil can only be possessed by creatures in finite degrees. Moreover, this
argument is supported by a consideration of divine attributes. Since God is creator and communicates
his goodness to his creation, “there is no creature which does not receive something of his goodness”
(PVII.S2). Therefore, every creature possesses some degree of spirituality, even the crassest material
object. As we can easily conclude, this argument leads Conway to some kind of panpsychism,
implying that every creature is – in a certain measure – composed by spirit. Combined with her
doctrine of the changeability of spirit into matter and vice versa, this thesis effectively suggests a
substantial immanence of divinity in creatures.
Nonetheless, despite her rejection of substantial and topological transcendence, Conway does not
endorse immanentism. Instead, her understanding of transcendence focuses on what could perhaps
be interpreted as the weakest line of defense: tropological transcendence. This form of metaphysical
transcendence simply requires that there be a fundamental difference between the manner of existence
of divinity and the manner in which creatures (or phenomenal beings) exist. Note that tropological
transcendence per se does not require that such difference be essential. However, given that most
arguments investigating God’s manner of existence are essential a priori arguments, one could
interpret tropological transcendence as establishing an essential and existential difference between
our manner of existence and that of God.
Reading the Principles in search of a robust notion of transcendence, one cannot fail to notice how
Conway establishes God’s radical difference from his creatures through the notion of mutability, i.e.,
capacity to change. She establishes this tenet since the beginning of the Principles, stating that “in
God there is no time, change, arrangement, or division of parts. For he is wholly and universally one
in himself and within himself without any variation or admixture” (PI.S2).4 Here, we can notice an
important mention of the notion of unity, which connects Conway’s metaphysics to the basis of
Leibniz’s monadology. The idea of “one in himself and within himself” implies that there are no parts
in God, either proper or improper, and that he is therefore not a composite being. Leaving this issue
aside, however, let us return to Conway’s denial of God’s mutability, which is developed in the
sections of the Principles devoted to the relationship between spirit and body.
Just like bodies were generated by the corruption of spirits engendered by the Fall, spirits can redeem
themselves and return to God. The mutability of creatures to and from spirituality, or deiformity,
strengthens once again Conway’s monist position with respect to the created world. At the same time,
this doctrine opens the gateway for her belief in a so-called “transmutation of species”.5 The return
4
See also PI.S4: “…since there is no time in him nor any mutability, there can exist in him no new knowledge or will at
all but his will and knowledge are eternal and without time or beyond time”. We can observe here a significant nod
towards Spinoza’s doctrine of the inseparability of God’s will and knowledge, which has been interpreted as a
considerable pathway to divine necessity; it is against this doctrine that Leibniz developed his theodicy.
5
Felter, “Body, Spirit and Gender in Anne Conway”, 135.
to a pre-lapsarian status of pure spirituality is possible for all beings and it represents their natural
inclination, insofar as “it is the nature of a creature, unless it degenerates, always to become more and
more like the creator.” (PVII.S1).
This doctrine of progressive deification is confirmed by another passage of the same section, which
reads: “Because spirit is more excellent [than body], the more spiritual a certain creature becomes,
the closer it comes to God, who, as we all know, is the highest spirit” (ibidem). To be sure, this
approximation to God is necessarily asymptotic. Creatures, these admixtures of spirit and body, can
never become truly godlike, insofar as God’s spirituality is actually infinite, while “a body is always
able to become more and more spiritual to infinity” (ibidem). As Christia Mercer has convincingly
argued, this metaphysical doctrine is decidedly indebted to the Platonist tradition.6 Just as God is one
in himself, as we have seen above, creatures “must be multiple” (PVII.S4), which means that they
must be comprised of parts. Therefore, even if they are able to climb the ladder of spirituality to
progressively shed all their materiality, they can never truly accomplish the deification which is
asymptotically implied by their nature.7
In fact, the very attitude for change possessed by creatures is, according to Conway, the crux of their
distinction from divinity. In a remarkably straightforward passage, she affirms:
There are three kinds of beings. The first is altogether immutable. The second can only change towards
the good, so that which is good by its very nature can become better. The third kind is that which,
although it was good by its very nature, is nevertheless able to change from good to good as well as
from good to evil. The first and the last of these three kinds are opposites. The second is the natural
medium between them, through which the extremes are united (PV.S3).

Thus, mutability becomes the tropological difference which establishes God’s radical transcendence
from the kind of being enjoyed by creatures. Notice that here, Conway does not imply that existence
is a form of goodness, or perfection (to employ a Scholastic terminology). In fact, she is rather clear
regarding the nonsensical conception of existence as a predicate. “Reality is not properly speaking
attributed to something” (PVII.S2), she affirms, leading to a denial of the possibility of the existence
of pure matter. For this reason, immutability is a property that can only be enjoyed by the stable
extreme, God, who possesses infinite goodness and spirituality. On the opposite end of the spectrum,
we do not discover a dichotomously stable evil, which would possess an impossible infinite
materiality. Instead, we find an extensively finite – albeit intensively infinite – capacity for change.
The protean capacity to mutate, to transform from good to evil and from spiritual to corporeal, is the
distinguishing sign of creatures. According to Conway, this sign can be discovered through
phenomenal observation (“…daily experience teaches us”, PV.S3), although it finds its justification
in the a priori argumentation summarized above.
Altogether aprioristic is, instead, the argument that establishes the existence of the second kind of
being, denominated “medium” in the excerpt just cited. As Felter rightly notes, the status of this
“middle being” does not equate to that of “a ‘mediator’ in anything like our present sense, a go-
between or a negotiator”.8 Instead, the second kind of being is a “be-between”, which “is a median in
respect to its nature” (PV.S4). The metaphysical justification for its existence is deeply rooted in
Aristotelian tradition. “Such a mediator”, Conway writes, “is necessary by the very nature of things
because otherwise a gap would remain and one extreme would be united with the other…which is

6
C. Mercer, “Anne Conway’s Metaphysics of Sympathy”, in Feminist History of Philosophy: The Recovery and
Evaluation of Women’s Philosophical Thought, ed. E. O’Neill and M. P. Lascano (Cham: Springer 2010), 55-56.
7
Cf. PVII.S1, quoted above.
8
Felter, “Body, Spirit and Gender in Anne Conway”, 133.
impossible and against the nature of things” (PV.S4). This important metaphysical role is entrusted,
in Conway’s philosophy, to Christ, the “first born of all creatures”. In this sense, the “metaphysical
Christ acts as the cause and explanation for the created world”.9 Thus, the being-in-between is causa
sive ratio of the creatures, without the direct implication of God, infinitely infinite, in the finitude of
the creatural universe.
The necessity of Christ as a being-in-between situated inter creator and creatures is not exclusively a
matter of Neoplatonic ascendence. In the Annotations to the first Chapter of the Principles, Conway
explicitly quotes the Kabbalah as providing the most satisfactory explanation for the necessity of a
Messiah, or Adam Kadmon.10 Through the imagery derived from the Lurianic tradition, Conway
argues that the inaccessibility of God’s light, in its “infinity”, would have prevented creatures from
“enduring the great intensity of his light” (PI.A1). Thus, oriented by a teleological principle, God
diminished the intensity of his light creating a void, that was not outright privation or non-being but
the soul of the Messiah, Christ, or logos.11 Christ is therefore “both bridge and buffer between God
and the world”, assuming a Janus-like identity that unites the two unmatching extremes of finitude
and infinity.12
As well as the Kabbalistic influence, the Neo-Platonic derivation of this theory of progressive
diminishment is outright evident in these passages. However, it is important to note how God’s active
role in this progressive emanation is safeguarded in the Annotations: God’s own ‘retreat’ from
absolute infinity is a choice – born out of goodness – that allows the generation of Christ and the
creatures in turn.
Thanks to this Kabbalistic structure, Conway is able to reframe the conception of the divine Trinity
to produce a new comprehension of transcendence. This transcendence, as I argued above, is
tropological – it pertains to the mode of essence and existence. The Christian Trinity (composed by
Father, Son, and Holy Ghost) represents God, according to Conway, insofar as
…the first concept is the infinite God himself, considered above and beyond his creation; the second
is the same God insofar as he is the Messiah; the third is the same god insofar as he is with the Messiah
in creatures, with the lowest degree of light which is adapted to the perception of creatures.13

Here, an important key to interpret the text of the Annotations is the distinction of reason implied by
Conway by reaffirming the sameness of each of the persons of the Trinity. In contemporary
philosophy’s lingo, the passage above could be translated as affirming that God qua Father is
immensely infinite and transcendent, situated above and beyond creatures. God qua Son is the being-
in-between which allows the flow of God’s creation without a contact between “extremes”, as we
have seen above. Finally, God qua Holy Ghost is the immanent participation of divinity in creatures.
Conway confirms this interpretation in the segment closing the Annotations, where she affirms that
the word ‘person’ does not signify “…an individual substance, but merely a concept for representing
a species or for considering a mode” (my emphasis). To be sure, the recasting of the divine trinity as
a triad of concepts does not fall in line with Christian orthodoxy. However, given Conway’s particular

9
Mercer, “Anne Conway’s Metaphysics of Sympathy”, 61.
10
It is not entirely clear whether the Annotations were penned by Conway herself or by or a later editor (perhaps Henry
More or Francis Mercury van Helmont), as it has been suggested by recent commentators: see for example E. Thomas,
“Time, space, and process in Anne Conway”, British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 25:5 (2017), 1005; and J.
Reid, “Anne Conway and Her Circle on Monads”, Journal of the History of Philosophy 58:4 (2020), 701.
11
Cf. PI.A2-5.
12
Cf. S. Hutton, Anne Conway: A Woman Philosopher (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 225.
13
PI.A7; emphasis is mine.
context and her affiliation to the ecumenic Quakers, we have sufficient reason to believe that this
philosophical translation captures her inclusive intent, which is explicitly stated earlier in the first
chapter of the Principles. Conceiving the persons of the trinity as separate substances, according to
Conway, is “a stumbling block and offense to Jews, Turks, and other people”. Such a theory “has no
reasonable sense in itself and is found nowhere in Scripture” (PI.S7). Thus, she suggests “omitting”
this conception from the formulation of necessary articles of faith, a common exercise among Early
Modern authors. This operation, in Conway’s eyes, cannot but find agreement among “those who are
the most knowledgeable and judicious among Christians” (ibidem). While such considerations might
be born out of an ecumenic desire, then, their scope is decidedly wider and testify Conway’s
commitment to capturing the truth of God’s essence.
For these reasons, we should take seriously the text of the Annotations if we are to comprehend
Conway’s attitude towards immanence and transcendence. As the remarks above prove, Conway
understands transcendence and immanence as two modes of God’s nature, distinguished by reason
and by their adaptation to the finite understanding of creatures. However, since Conway remarks
repeatedly that one of the crucial attributes of God is his unity, this distinction must not be understood
as a fracture within God. From the metaphysical point of view, God’s unity is safeguarded by the
theory of emanative causation, remodulated through the Kabbalistic imagery. As Mercer reminds us,
“…one of the great benefits of the Theory of Emanative Causation is that it allows God to be both
transcendent from and immanent in creatures”.14 Furthermore, Conway’s interpretation of trinitarian
theory allows for an even finer distinction within immanence. While the Holy Ghost is God qua
immanent, as we have seen, the Messiah-logos acquires the unique dimension of immanent
transcendence typical of inherent causes. What does it mean, however, to say that Christ is inherent
cause of creatural beings?
The issue of the necessity of a medium for creation could in fact be posited as the question of
causation. Conway apparently rejects the idea of any kind of mediating cause between God and
creatures, or instrumental cause (cf. PII.S1). However, in those passages she refers to God as
trinitarian being, reuniting the different aspects or concepts included in divinity. As we have seen
above, the distinction between persons of the trinity cannot in any way be conceived as a mereological
composition (since God cannot have parts, cf. PI.S3). Moreover, Conway does remark that God qua
Christ is involved in creation, both in her own claims (“…it is solely the function of God and Christ
to give being to things”; PVII.S3), and through scriptural authority (“…through Christ all things
visible and invisible have been made”; Colossians 1:16). Thus, we can conclude that Christ as logos
must be involved in creation. The metaphysical reason for this involvement can perhaps be traced in
Conway’s subscription to (a version of) the principle of sufficient reason, which counts amongst its
consequences that nihil ex nihilo fit. For extension, this principle also requires some form of
commonality between cause and effect. But as we have seen, God qua infinite does not share anything
with his creatures; it is therefore through Christ, who partially shares the attribute of mutability, that
causation must be understood.
What about the second requirement mentioned, i.e., inherence? This metaphysical feature is translated
in Conway’s works through the notion of intimate presence, which I introduced at the beginning of
this chapter. In the Early Modern period, the common understanding of intimate presence relies on
the mutual penetrability of spirits. In conjunction with extension, impenetrability defined what it
meant to be a “body”: two bodies could not occupy the same space at the same time. Conversely,
spirits were not prevented from sharing the same space. Locke, Toland, and Henry More each upheld

14
Mercer, “Anne Conway’s Metaphysics of Sympathy”, 57.
some variant of this doctrine. In a way that once again anticipates Leibniz’s theory of space, Conway
rejected this thesis, claiming that penetrability comes in degrees, and that “the impenetrability of
creatures must be limited to their center”, or essential unity (cf. PVII.S4).15 The proper meaning of
penetrability is intimate presence, which Conway defines as “when a certain homogenous substance
enters into another of equal size, which should not increase in size and weight” (ibidem). Attributing
this kind of penetrability to a creature, Conway argues, is not only wrong, but “an utter impossibility
and contradiction”. Creatures can share the same space, insofar as they are of different grains or
“grossness”, with the exception of their center. Furthermore, to attribute penetrability to spirit and not
to body, as we have seen before, only serves to circumvent the question, since spirit and body are
distinguished by mode, and not by essence.
The only being that possesses the fullest intimate presence is God. This, according to Conway,
“should be attributed primarily to God [qua Father] and secondly to Christ inasmuch as he is the
medium between God and creatures” (ibidem). However, attributing the Messiah intimate presence
generates a specific puzzle for Conway, who maintains the traditional Christian view that sees Christ
as true God and true human. Since human beings are a creature, they are involved in the ontological
gradient that entails a heterogeneous composition of spirit and body in their essence. But if Christ
qua human is intimately present in every creature at once, does that mean that his body – as well as
his spirit – possesses the same kind of penetrability? Conway bites the bullet: she does in fact affirm
that since Christ is the being-in-between, he “shares mutability and immutability and eternity and
time…he can be said to share spirit and body and consequently place and extension. For his body is
a different substance from the bodies of all the other creatures” (ibidem). The last clause of this text
is crucial for the understanding of Conway’s conception of transcendence.
As I have already demonstrated above, Conway rejects a substantial form of transcendence based on
the distinction of spirit and body. Instead, she argues that this distinction must be based on the manner
of essence and existence. Therefore, considering her homogenous monism, which argues in favour
of the mutability of body into spirit and vice versa, it makes perfect sense that she would argue in
favour of a similar transcendence regarding the body of Christ. Just like God and creatures have
different forms of being (mutable and immutable, eternal and durational, etc.), a similar transcendent
distinction must be formulated between Christ and creatures. Otherwise, creatures would be able to
mutate into Christ and vice versa. Instead, Conway posits what could be understood as a “triadistic”
metaphysics.16 The three kinds of being that Conway’s Principles posit cannot turn into each other,
under any condition.
Thus, the metaphysical framework described today produces a particular form of transcendence,
which is particularly unique in the Early Modern period. While Conway argues in favour of a rigid
separation of the kinds of being that exist, sternly segregating God from Christ and from the creatures
in reason of his manner of essence and existence, she also argues in favour of a complete penetrability
of creatures, which enjoy God’s intimate presence as spirits, and even Christ’s intimate presence as
bodies, since they share extension with the Messiah or being-in-between. For this reason, Conway’s
philosophy should be viewed as a most original attempt at elaborating a new form of immanence, one
that rejects Early Modern mechanism to seek an ideal framework to recognize the divine presence in
the world.

15
On this subject, see Reid, “Anne Conway and Her Circle on Monads”, 691.
16
Cf. D. Boyle, “Spontaneous and Sexual Generation in Conway's Principles”, in The Problem of Animal Generation in
Early Modern Philosophy, ed. J. E. H. Smith (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).
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