Conatus

Template:Two other uses Conatus, (Latin: effort; endeavor; impulse, inclination, tendency; undertaking), is a term used in early philosophies of psychology and metaphysics to refer to an innate inclination of matter or mind to continue to exist and enhance itself (Traupman 1966, p. 52). Over the millennia, many different definitions and treatments have been formulated by philosophers such as the 17th century Continental Rationalists, René Descartes, Baruch Spinoza, and Gottfried Leibniz, and their Empiricist contemporary Thomas Hobbes (LeBuffe 2006). The conatus may refer to the instinctual "will to live" of animals or to various metaphysical theories of motion and inertia (Wolfson 1934, p. 202). Often the concept is associated with God's will in a pantheist view of Nature, as in the case of Spinoza (LeBuffe 2006). The concept may be broken up into separate definitions for the mind and body, or even differentiated when discussing centrifugal force or inertia (Kollerstrom 1999).

The history of the term conatus is the story of a gradual evolution: after its formulation in ancient Greece, each successive philosopher to adopt the term put his own personal twist on the concept, tweaking the scope or meaning of the term such that it now has no concrete and universally accepted definition (Wolfson 1934, p. 202). These early authors wrote primarily in Latin, and thus used conatus not only as a technical term but as a common word and in a general sense. Conatus is, of course, more than simply a Latin participle; but this usage is in archaic texts difficult to discern from the more vulgar one, and difficult to differentiate in translation. In English translations, the term is italicized when used in this technical sense or translated and followed by "conatus" in brackets (Leibniz 1989, p. 118). Today, conatus is rarely used in the technical sense, since modern physics and evolutionary biology eclipse it; it has, however, been a notable influence on nineteenth and twentieth-century thinkers such as Friedrich Nietzsche and Louis Dumont.

Classical origins

The Latin conatus comes from the verb conatur, which is usually translated into English as, "to endeavor"; but the concept of the conatus was first developed in the Greek language by the Stoics before the Common Era. These groups used the word [ὁρμήν] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) to describe the bestial and human instinct towards self-preservation in a general sense. The Roman thinkers, Marcus Tullius Cicero and Diogenes Laertius, expanded this principle to include a repulsion from destruction, but continued to limit these assertions only to the motivations of non-human animals. Diogenes Laertius specifically denied the application of the term to plants. Before the Renaissance, Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus and Dante Alighieri expressed similar sentiments using the Latin words vult, velle or appetit as synonyms of "conatus"; indeed, all four terms may be used to translate the original Greek [ὁρμήν] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help). Around 1700, Telesius and Campanella extended the primitive Greek notions and applied them to all objects, animate and inanimate (Wolfson 1934, pp. 196, 199, 202).

In ancient Greece, Cicero, Laertius and Aristotle each alluded to a connection between the conatus and other emotions. In their view, the former induces the latter. They posited that humans do not wish to do something because they think it "good", but rather they think it "good" because they want to do it: in other words, the cause for human desire is our conatus, and the natural inclination for a body to augment itself in accordance with its principles (Wolfson 1934, p. 204).

There is a traditional connection between conatus and motion itself. Aquinas and Abravanel both related the concept directly to that which Augustine saw to be the "natural movements upward and downward or with their being balanced in an intermediate position" described in his De Civitate Dei, XI, 27. They called this force that causes objects to rise or fall, "amor naturalis", or "natural love" (Wolfson 1934, pp. 197, 200).

In Descartes

In the first half of the seventeenth century, René Descartes began to develop a more modern, materialistic concept of the conatus, describing it as "an active power or tendency of bodies to move, expressing the power of God" (Pietarinen 2000). Whereas the ancients had used the term in a strictly anthropomorphic sense similar to voluntary "endeavoring" or "struggling" to achieve certain ends, and medieval Scholastics has developed a notion of conatus as a mysterious intrinsic property of things, Descartes used the term in a somewhat more mechanistic sense. Here one can see the beginnings of a move away from the attribution of desires and intentions to nature and its workings toward a more scientific and modern view (Goukroger 1980).

Despite his dualism, Descartes strongly rejected the teleological, or purposive, view of the material world that was dominant in the West from the time of Aristotle. His mechanistic view of conatus and other such notions would have a revolutionary effect on the understanding of nature and physics. Descartes specified two varieties of the conatus: conatus a centro and conatus recedendi. Conatus a centro, or "tendency towards the center", was used by Descartes as a theory of gravity; conatus recendendi, or "tendency away from the center", represented the centrifugal forces (Kollerstrom 1999).These tendencies are not to be thought of in terms of animate dispositions and intentions, but rather as inherent properties or "forces" of the physical world.

Descartes, developing his First Law of Nature, also invoked the idea of a conatus se movendi, or "conatus of self-preservation"(Wolfson 1934, p. 201). This law is very closely related to Isaac Newton's much better-known Law of Inertia, which was developed fifty years later. Descartes' version states: "Each thing, insofar as in it lies, always perseveres in the same state, and when once moved, always continues to move" (Blackwell 1966, p. 220).

In Hobbes

Conatus and the psyche

Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), too, worked off of the previous notions of the conatus principle; but, he notably criticized previous definitions for failing to explain the origin of motion. Working towards this end becomes the primary focus of Hobbes' work in this field. Indeed, Hobbes "reduces all the cognitive functions of the mind to variations of its conative functions" (Bidney 1962, p. 91).

Furthermore, Hobbes describes emotion as the beginning of motion and the will as the sum of all emotions. This "will" forms the conatus of a body (Pietarinen 2000) and its physical manifestation is the perceived "will to survive" (LeBuffe 2006). In order that living beings may thrive, Hobbes says, "they seek peace and fight anything that threatens this peace" (Pietarinen 2000). Hobbes also equates this conatus with "imagination", and states that a change in the conatus, or will, is the result of "deliberation" (Schmitter 2006).

Conatus and physics

I define [conatus] to be motion made in less space and time then can be given; that is, less then can be determined or assigned by exposition or number; that is, motion made through the length of a point, and in an instant or point of time (Jesseph 2006, p. 21).

As it was in his psychological theory, Hobbes's physical conatus was an infinitessimal unit of motion; it was the beginning of motion: an inclination in a specified direction. Impetus and other concepts of Hobbes's were defined in terms of this conatus. The impetus, for instance, was, “a measure of the conatus exercised by a moving body over the course of time” (Jesseph 2006, p. 22). Resistance was a caused by a contrary conatus; force was this and “the magnitude of the body” (Jesseph 2006, p. 35). Hobbes also used the word conatus to refer to the "restorative forces" which may cause springs , for example, to contract or expand. Hobbes perceived some force inherent in these objects that inclined them to return to their previous state. Today, science attributes this phenomenon to material elasticity (Osler 2001).

In Spinoza

Of all of the different uses of the word "conatus" in philosophy, Baruch Spinoza's were perhaps the most significant ^[specify]. Spinoza applied it to the human body, psyche and both simultaneously, using a different term for each (Wolfson 1934, p. 199). When referring to psychological manifestation of the concept, he uses the term voluntas (will). When referring to the overarching concept, he uses the word appetitus or (appetite). When referring to the bodily impulse, he uses the plain term "conatus" (Allison 1975, p. 126). Sometimes he expands the term and used the whole phrase, "conatus sese conservandi" (the striving for self-preservation) (Duff 1903, chp. VII)

Spinoza asserts the existence of this general principle of a "conatus" in attempting to explain the "self-evident" truth that "nothing can be destroyed except by an external cause" (IIIP4); it is self-evident that "the definition of anything affirms, and does not negate, the thing's essence" (Spinoza 1677, p. 66). This resistance to self-destruction is formulated by Spinoza to equal an anthropomorphic endeavoring to continue to exist: and conatus is the word he most often uses to describe this force (Allison 1975, p. 124).

In Spinoza's world-view, this principle is applicable to all things, and furthermore it constitutes the very essence of objects, including Man, for these are but finite modes of God (Lin 2004, p. 4). Thus, as is stated in IIIP8, this conatus is of "indefinite time"; it lasts as long as the object does (Spinoza 1677, pp. 66–7). Spinoza uses conatus to describe an inclination for things to increase in character; more than just cause to continue statically, to strive towards perfection (Allison 1975, p. 126). Even further, all existing things act if and only if the action maintains or augments its existence (Lin 2004, p. 4). Spinoza, extending the concepts of his precedessors, used the term conatus to refer to rudimentary concepts of inertia, as Descartes had even earlier (LeBuffe 2006). It follows that as a thing cannot self-destruct without the action of external forces, motion and rest, too, exist indefinitely until disturbed (Allison 1975, p. 125).

Psychological manifestation

Lit candles destroy themselves, seemingly against the princples of Spinoza

The concept of the conatus when used in Baruch Spinoza's philosophy on psychology was derived from sources both ancient and medieval. Spinoza reformulates the principles that the Stoics, Cicero, Laertius and especially Hobbes and Descartes developed (Morgan 2006, p. ix). One significant change he makes to Hobbes' theory is his belief that the conatus ad motum, (Latin: conatus to motion), is not mental, but material (Bidney 1962, p. 93).

Spinoza, with his determinism, believed that man and nature may be unified under a consistent set of laws; God and nature are one, and there is no free-will: mankind is thus an integral part of nature (Allison 1975, p. 125). Spinoza explained seemingly irregular human behaviour as really "natural" and rational and motivated by this principle of the conatus (Dutton 2006, chp. 5); he replaced the notion of free will with the conatus, a principle that could be applied to all of nature and not just man (Allison 1975, p. 125).

Emotions and affects

The relationship between the conatus and the human affects is not clear. Firmin DeBrabander, assistant professor of philosophy at the Maryland Institute College of Art, and Antonio Damasio, professor of neuroscience at the University of Southern California, both argue that the human affects arise from the conatus and the perpetual drive toward perfection (DeBrabander 2007, p. 20-1). Indeed, Spinoza states in IVP18 of his Ethics that happiness specifically, "consists in the human capacity to preserve itself." This endeavor is also named by Spinoza to be the "foundation of virtue". (Damasio 2003, p. 170). Inversely, a person is saddened by anything that opposes his conatus (Damasio 2003, pp. 138–9)

The late David Bidney, who was a professor at Yale University, disagrees. Bidney closely associates "desire", a primary affect, with the conatus principle of Spinoza. This assertion is backed up by the Scholium of IIIP9 of the Ethics which states, "...Between appetite and desire there is no difference, except that desire is generally related to men insofar as they are conscious of the appetite. So desire can be defined as appetite together with consciousness of the appetite" (LeBuffe 2006). According to Bidney, this desire is is controlled by the other affects, pleasure and pain, and thus the conatus strives towards that which causes joy and avoids that which produce pain (Bidney 1962, p. 87).

Counter-arguments

It has been noted that, despite Spinoza's extensive argument for the existence of a universal conatus principle, many arguments against it can be enumerated. Martin Lin, professor at the University of Toronto, points to lit candles, time bombs and suicidal persons as counterexamples to Spinozean conatus. Counter-counter arguments may be, “lit candles do not light themselves”, or “Tongley's sculpture or a time bomb involve parts that never succeed in constituting genuinely integrated wholes” (Lin 2004, p. 30).

In Leibniz

"[Conatus] is to motion as a point is to space, or as one to infinity, for it is the beginning and end of motion"

(Arthur 1998)

Gottfried Leibniz (1646 – 1716) was a student of Erhard Weigel and learned of the conatus princple from him and from Hobbes, though Weigel used the word tendentia (Latin: tendency) (Arthur 1998). Specifically, Leibniz used the word "conatus" in his Exposition and Defence of the New System in 1695 to describe similar notions to previous ones, but here, he differentiated between the conatus of the body and soul, the first of which may only travel in a straight like by its own power, and the latter of which may "remember" more complicated motion (Leibniz 1988, p. 135). Leibniz also defined the term monadic conatus, as the "state of change" through which his monads perpetually advance (Arthur 1994, sec. 3).

Leibniz did do much to develop the concept of a conatus, incorporating it with the principles of integral calculus. Leibniz made some significant contributions to the early science of physical dynamics, using the adopted term "conatus" as a mathematical analog of Newton's "force" (Gillespie 1971, p. 161). The impetus was the result of a continuous summation of the conatus of a body, as the vis viva was the sum of the inactive vis mortua (Duchesneau 1998). Based on the work of Kepler and possibly Descartes, Leibniz developed a model of planetary motion based on the conatus principle he developed with the idea of a harmonic vortex. This theory is expounded in the work Tentamen de motuum coelestium causis (Gillespie 1971, p. 161).

Related terms

Giambattista Vico (1668 – 1744) defined conatus as the essence of human society (Goulding 2005, p. 22040).

Arthur Schopenhauer's, (1788 - 1860), philosophy, not necessarily derived from Spinoza, nevertheless contains a principle notably similar to that of Spinoza's conatus. This principle, Wille zum Leben, or Will to Live, described the specific phenomenon of an organism's self-preservation instinct (Rabenort 1911, p. 16).

Friedrich Nietzsche, (1844 - 1900), developed a separate principle which is related to Spinoza's original: this was Nietzsche's Will to Power, or Wille zur Macht (Durant & Durant 1963, chp. IX).

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 reminiscient of the conatus principle of Spinoza and others (Schrift 2006, p. 13).

Louis Dumont, (1911 - 1998), defined 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" (Polt 1996).

Modern significance

Physical

After the advent of Newtonian physics, the concept of a conatus of all physical bodies was largely superseded by the principle of inertia and conservation of momentum. As Bidney states, "It is true that logically desire or the conatus is merely a principle of inertia ... the fact remains, however, that this is not Spinoza's usage" (Bidney, p. 88). Likewise, conatus was used by many philosophers to describe other concepts which have slowly been made obsolete. Conatus recendendi, for instance, became the centrifugal force, and gravity is used where conatus a centro was before (Kollerstrom 1999).

Biological

The archaic concept of conatus is today reconciled with modern biology; but the perceived conatus of today is explained in terms of chemistry and neurology where, before, it was a matter of metaphysics and theurgy (Damasio 2003, p. 37). This concept similar to conatus may be "constructed so as to maintain the coherence of a living organism's structures and functions against numerous life-threatening odds", as put by Damasio (36). This conatus is similar to modern notions of the libido in the Jungian sense, and the animal directive of self preservation.

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