Conatus - Related Usages and Terms

Related Usages and Terms

Several other uses of the term conatus, apart from the primary ones mentioned above, have been formulated by various philosophers over the centuries. There are also some important related terms and concepts which have, more or less, similar meanings and usages. Giambattista Vico (1668–1744) defined conatus as the essence of human society, and also, in a more traditional, hylozoistic sense, as the generating power of movement which pervades all of nature. Nearly a century after the beginnings of modern science, Vico, inspired by Neoplatonism, explicitly rejected the principle of inertia and the laws of motion of the new physics. For him, nature was composed neither of atoms, as in the dominant view, nor of extension, as in Descartes, but of metaphysical points animated by a conatus principle provoked by God.

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) developed a philosophy that contains a principle notably similar to that of Hobbes's conatus. This principle, Wille zum Leben, or "Will to Live", described the specific phenomenon of an organism's self-preservation instinct. Schopenhauer qualified this, however, by suggesting that the Will to Live is not limited in duration. Rather, "the will wills absolutely and for all time", across generations. Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900), an early disciple of Schopenhauer, developed a separate principle which comes out of a rejection of the primacy of Schopenhauer's Will to Live and other notions of self-preservation. He called his version the Will to Power, or Wille zur Macht.

Sigmund Freud (1856–1939), greatly depended on Spinoza's formulation of the conatus principle as a system of self-preservation, though he never cited him directly in any of his published works. Around the same time, Henri Bergson (1859–1941), developed the principle of the élan vital, or "vital impulse", which was thought to aid in the evolution of organisms. This concept, which implies a fundamental driving force behind all life, is reminiscent of the conatus principle of Spinoza and others.

For Max Scheler, the concept of Drang is the centerpiece of philosophical anthropology and metaphysics. Though his concept has been important throughout his entire philosophical career, it was only developed later in his life when his focus shifted from phenomenology to metaphysics. Like Bergson's élan vital, Drang (drive or impulsion) is the impetus of all life; however, unlike in Bergson's vitalistic metaphysics, the significance of Drang is that it provides the motivation and driving force even of Spirit (Geist). Spirit, which includes all theoretical intentionality, is powerless without the movement of Drang, the material principle, as well as Eros, the psychological principle.

The cultural anthropologist Louis Dumont (1911–1988), described a cultural conatus built directly upon Spinoza's seminal definition in IIIP3 of his Ethics. The principle behind this derivative concept states that any given culture, "tends to persevere in its being, whether by dominating other cultures or by struggling against their domination".