Conatus

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Contents 1 Classical origins 2 Descartes 3 Hobbes 3.1 In the psyche 3.2 In physics 4 Spinoza 4.1 Psychological manifestation 4.1.1 Emotions 4.2 Counter-arguments 5 Leibniz 6 Other notable definitions 7 Modern significance 7.1 Physical 7.2 Biological 8 Bibliography 9 Further reading

Conatus, (Latin: effort; endeavor; impulse, inclination, tendency; undertaking), is a term used historically in early philosophies of psychology and metaphysics referring to an innate inclination of matter or mind to continue to exist and enhance itself (Traupman 1966, p. 52). Over the millenia, however, many differently nuanced definitions and treatments have sprung up from philosophers such as the rationalists, René Descartes, Baruch Spinoza, Gottfried Leibniz, and their contemporary Thomas Hobbes (LeBuffe 2006). The last of these three constitute the "great early modern classic of conatus", as their discussions are perhaps the most historically significant (Tuusvuori 2000, p. 147).

The history of the term conatus is one of a gradual evolution. After its formulation in ancient Greece, each sucessive set of philosophers to adopt the term has put his own personal twist on the subject, tweaking the scope or meaning of the term such that it now has no one concrete definition. The conatus may refer to the instinctual "will to live" of animals or various metaphysical theories of motion and inertia. Often the concept is associated with God's will in a pantheist view of Nature, as Spinoza used it, though not always (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 (Wolfson 1934, p. 202)(Kollerstrom 1999).

[edit] 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 and Peripatetics. These groups used the word ὁρμήν to describe the bestial and human instinct towards self-preservation in a general sense. 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. Augustine, Telesius and Campanella extended this primitive notion and applied it to all objects, animate and inanimate. Much later, Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus and Dante Alighieri followed, expressing similar sentiments and 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 (Wolfson 1934, pp. 196,199,202).

Back in ancient Greece, Cicero, Laertius and Aristotle each alluded to a connection between the conatus and other emotions: where the former was the impetus for 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 "amor naturalis", or "natural love" (Wolfson 1934, pp. 197,200).

[edit] Descartes

See also: René Descartes

In the first half of the seventeenth century, René Descartes extrapolated, describing the concept of conatus, "to be an active power or tendency of bodies to move, expressing the power of God" (Pietarinen 2000). He spoke specifically of conatus a centro or conatus recedendi. Conatus a centro, or "effort towards the center", Descartes used as a theory of gravity; conatus recendendi, or "effort from the center", represented the centrifugal forces (Kollerstrom 1999).

Descartes, developing his First Law of Nature, used many principles in common with the conatus se movendi, or "conatus of self-preservation"(Wolfson 1934, p. 201). This law is very closely related to Isaac Newton's First Law, developed fifty years later. By Descartes' version, "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)

[edit] Hobbes

See also: Thomas Hobbes

[edit] In the psyche

Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) describes emotion as the impetus for motion and will as the sum of all emotions and the final balance of repulsion and attraction; this "will" forms the conatus of a body (Pietarinen 2000). The physical manifestation of this conatus 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 links motions caused by the impact of external objects on our sense organs and the reverberations of 'decaying sense' to the imagination; the imagination can in turn be considered the 'small,' almost indiscernible, beginnings of animal motion, which Hobbes calls "endeavour", or, in Latin, "conatus". Alterations in these small, interior motions produce what we call 'deliberation,' the last motion of which is the will that produces voluntary motion"(Schmitter 2006).

[edit] In 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. This conatus was an inclination towards motion 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 sum of contrary conatuses; 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 act on springs, and bladders for example. Hobbes percieved some force inherent in these objects that inclined them to return to their previous state. Today, science attributes this action to the phenomenon of elasticity (Osler 2001).

[edit] Spinoza

See also: Baruch Spinoza

Of all of the different uses of the word "conatus" in philosophy, Baruch Spinoza's were perhaps the most significant, for it was the most developed, and most complete^[specify]. When he adopted the term conatus, he 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 used the term voluntas (will). When referring to the overarching concept, he used the word appetitus or (appetite). When referring to the bodily impulse, he used the plain term "conatus" (Allison 1975, p. 126). Sometimes he expanded the term and used the whole phrase, "conatus sese conservandi" (Duff 1903, chp. VII)

Spinoza asserts the existence of this general "conatus" in attempting to explain the "self-evident" truth that "nothing can be destroyed except by an external cause" (Prop. IV). He states in his proof of this proposition 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 do something if and only if it 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 before even him (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).

[edit] Psychological manifestation

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).

Specifically, 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).

[edit] Emotions

Spinoza also argues that all of the human affects arise from the conatus and the perpetual drive toward perfection. He states in Proposition IIXX of Part IV 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)

[edit] Counter-arguments

It has been noted that, despite Spinoza's extensive argument for the existence of a universal conatus principle, many counter-examples may be innumerated. Martin Lin, professor at the University of Toronto lists Homage to New York, lit candles, time bombs and suicidal persons. 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).

[edit] 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)

See also: Gottfried Leibniz

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 1695, p. 135). Leibniz also defined the term monadic conatus, as the "state of change" through which his monads go perpetually advance (Arthur 1994, sec. 3).

Leibniz did do much to develop the concept of a conatus, incorporating it into his newly developed 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).

[edit] Other notable definitions

• 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 instict to live (Rabenort 1911, p. 16).

• Friedrich Nietzsche, (1844 - 1900), developed a separate principle which echoed Spinoza's original: this was Nietzsche's Will to Power, or Wille zur Macht in German (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 PIII 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).

[edit] Modern significance

[edit] 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. Also, conatus recendendi became the centrifugal force and gravity is used where conatus a centro was before (Kollerstrom 1999).

[edit] 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 is 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.

[edit] Bibliography

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[edit] Further reading