Conatus - in Spinoza

In Spinoza

Conatus is a central theme in the philosophy of Benedict de Spinoza (1632–1677). According to Spinoza, "each thing, as far as it lies in itself, strives to persevere in its being" (Ethics, part 3, prop. 6). Spinoza presents a few reasons for believing this. First, particular things are, as he puts it, modes of God, which means that each one expresses the power of God in a particular way (Ethics, part 3, prop. 6, dem.). Moreover, it could never be part of the definition of God that his modes contradict one another (Ethics, part 3, prop. 5); each thing, therefore, "is opposed to everything which can take its existence away" (Ethics, part 3, prop. 6, dem.). This resistance to destruction is formulated by Spinoza in terms of a striving to continue to exist, and conatus is the word he most often uses to describe this force.

Striving to persevere is not merely something that a thing does in addition to other activities it might happen to undertake. Rather, striving is "nothing but the actual essence of the thing" (Ethics, part 3, prop. 7). Some Spinoza scholars take this phrase to mean that a thing is ultimately nothing more than a conatus. Spinoza also uses the term conatus to refer to rudimentary concepts of inertia, as Descartes had earlier. Since a thing cannot be destroyed without the action of external forces, motion and rest, too, exist indefinitely until disturbed.