Quotation
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“Each thing, as far as it can by its own power, strives to persevere in its being.”
Baruch Spinoza · Rationalism · Early modern · 1677
What does it mean?
The usual reading takes conatus as the actual essence of each thing: the striving by which it keeps on existing, which in a mind becomes appetite and, when conscious, desire. It is not an optional instinct beside an otherwise idle being. A rival reading hears a biological selfishness that would make friendship and understanding unintelligible as increases of power. Proposition 6 is general; The human consequences are drawn in the propositions that follow, at the start of the account of the affects.
Did Baruch Spinoza really say this?
The library’s label is Paraphrase or translation. Edwin Curley's translation of Ethics, part three, proposition 6. The striving is not a decision added on. Later propositions call it the actual essence of the thing. This wording is a translation.
Where it comes from
Ethics III, proposition 6
Approximate date: 1677.
How to use it
Getting through a night shift to morning, in a care home in Plymouth, is a thin form of perseverance and not yet the increase of power he will call joy. The proposition explains why lasting is not a neutral fact. It does not say that merely lasting is the whole of virtue; Staying in being is the floor; What a person can do, once staying is secured, is the rest of the ethics.
A mindset reading
Striving is often modernised into a talk about grit. He means a claim about what a thing is, not a sermon about effort. Grit can fail, and the proposition does not moralise the failure; Nor does it praise harming others as the obvious way to persevere; Later he argues that power grows through adequate ideas and through what agrees with one's nature, which cuts against a crude war of all against all.
Understand the philosophy
The key term is conatus, striving, which the next proposition calls the actual essence of the thing. In humans it is appetite, and desire when there is consciousness of the appetite. Part three builds joy and sadness as increases and decreases of this power. Curley's translation is the English used here; The doctrine is the engine of the ethics, not a side remark about survival.
- self
- ethics
- mind
FAQ
What does it mean?
The usual reading takes conatus as the actual essence of each thing: the striving by which it keeps on existing, which in a mind becomes appetite and, when conscious, desire. It is not an optional instinct beside an otherwise idle being. A rival reading hears a biological selfishness that would make friendship and understanding unintelligible as increases of power. Proposition 6 is general; The human consequences are drawn in the propositions that follow, at the start of the account of the affects.
Did Baruch Spinoza really say this?
Paraphrase or translation. Edwin Curley's translation of Ethics, part three, proposition 6. The striving is not a decision added on. Later propositions call it the actual essence of the thing. This wording is a translation.
Which work is it in?
Ethics III, proposition 6 Approximate date: 1677.