Below are the sections from Spinoza’s Ethics usually taken to characterise his commitment to a theory of ‘conatus’ – that is the ‘striving’ of organised entities to continue to exist in their organised form (rather than just falling apart). The idea of conatus what not specific to Spinoza – others shared it – but it takes on a very particular role and character for Spinoza.
Ethics Pt3
VI. Everything, in so far as it is in itself, endeavours to persist in its own being.
>>>>>Proof—Individual things are modes whereby the attributes of God are expressed in a given determinate manner (I. xxv.Cor.); that is, (I. xxxiv.), they are things which express in a given determinate manner the power of God, whereby God is and acts; now no thing contains in itself anything whereby it can be destroyed, or which can take away its existence (III. iv.); but contrariwise it is opposed to all that could take away its existence (III. v.). Therefore, in so far as it can, and in so far as it is in itself, it endeavours to persist in its own being. Q.E.D.
VII. The endeavour, wherewith everything endeavours to persist in its own being, is nothing else but the actual essence of the thing in question.
>>>>>Proof—From the given essence of any thing certain consequences necessarily follow (I. xxxvi.), nor have things any power save such as necessarily follows from their nature as determined (I. xxix.); wherefore the power of any given thing, or the endeavour whereby, either alone or with other things, it acts, or endeavours to act, that is (III. vi.), the
