It's Alive: Margaret Cavendish on Matter, Order, and God

Margaret Cavendish is widely regarded as a vitalist: she considers all matter as alive, including an endowment with mental capacities, and rejects dualism. She rejects two important motives for dualism in the period. She agrees with her Cambridge Platonist contemporaries, More and Cudworth (and many others) that the order in nature ultimately comes from God’s plans. But she rejects their view that matter can’t execute God’s commands and that their execution requires immaterial entities. For Cavendish matter is shot through with rationality and the power to implement plans. This conception of matter comes with an utter rejection of the other prominent motive for dualism: the traditional view that human beings are distinguished from the rest of nature in virtue of their rationality and freedom. This talk is part of a (much) longer paper that I am writing with Alison Simmons on Margaret Cavendish and Anne Conway.