Conatus — A Latin term meaning effort, striving, or endeavor; in Spinoza, the effort by which each thing perseveres in its being, identified with its very essence. In the Ethics (1677, posthumous), Part III, proposition 6, Spinoza states that each thing, as far as it is in itself, strives to persevere in its being; in proposition 7, that this striving is nothing but the actual essence of the thing itself. The concept has antecedents in seventeenth-century physics: Descartes uses it in a mechanical context (Principles of Philosophy, 1644), and Hobbes speaks of conatus as minimal motion in De Corpore (1655), later applying it to human passions in Leviathan. Spinoza generalizes it and makes it the principle of his psychology and ethics: when referred to mind and body together, conatus is called appetite; appetite accompanied by consciousness of itself is desire (cupiditas, III, prop. 9, scholium). The fundamental affects are defined in relation to it: joy is the passage to a greater perfection, or power of acting, and sadness the passage to a lesser one. In Part IV, virtue is identified with power of acting itself, and seeking what is useful to oneself under the guidance of reason is the foundation of Spinoza’s ethics. The concept was taken up by Deleuze (Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza, 1968) and is often compared with Nietzsche’s will to power; in a 1881 letter to Overbeck, Nietzsche said he was astonished to find a precursor in Spinoza. See Spinoza, Hobbes, Deleuze, Nietzsche, and monism.
← Glossary