ABSTRACT
Anne Conway, nee Anne Finch, was born in 1631 to Sir Heneage Finch and Elizabeth Cradock. Heneage Finch was the Recorder of the City of London – a senior judge and high-level government functionary – as well as Speaker of the House of Commons. Know little of Conway’s education, but based on the testimony of those familiar with her, she was fluent in Latin and had at least some knowledge of Greek. The immediate metaethical consequence of the Participation Argument is straightforward: it allows making sense of facts about the good of a created individual that are independent of its species. Conway’s willingness to endorse the universality of moral subjecthood, if nothing else, should highlight for the distance between her metaethical views and those in vogue. This may make it seem as though the study of her system has little to offer the contemporary metaethicist.
