Spinoza's conatus

by Maria Odete

Spinoza considered the exercise of human reason as an intense desiderative activity in which the desire could obtain the plenitude of satisfaction. The reason, as ratio cognoscendi, positions itself as a terminal phase of the desire and as the complete satisfaction of that desire.

Spinoza's conatus, that influenced Nietzsche so much, was thought of as a primordial energy or potentia that exceeded the human reason and in which the desire had its origin. Man was first defined by Spinoza, in the book III of ethics, as a conatus, and, only after, considered as a rational being. The conatus is active and in act and explicates itself by the power of being affected and, because of that, possesses a tendency to maintain at the maximum the capability of being affected.

The thought is an attribute in a permanent circuit of resendings to the conatus or potentia and, it is, by itself, all the objective condition that the absolute potentia of thinking possesses a priori as unconditioned totality.

Damásio (2003) interpreted the conatus as an impetus of self-preservation in permanent actualization, locating it in the cerebral circuits as an aggregate of dispositions that, once activated by the internal or external environment, represent themselves by chemical and neural signals and lead to a search for overlife and well being.