conatus
Compiled with AI assistance and selectively reviewed. Please consult the cited passages; the books remain the authoritative source. About this companion
Editorial synthesis · provisional
Definition
Conatus names the Spinozan striving of each thing, as far as it can, to persevere in its being. The books also adapt it as the persistence of organization that enables forms to endure and condition further becoming. This naturalized use need not accept Spinoza's deterministic closure, attribute conscious desire to everything, or make persistence a drive toward universal progress.
Explanation
AB introduces conatus without requiring Spinoza's full metaphysics. Stars, cells and traditions persist differently, and their continued availability makes further formation cumulative. Its personal application concerns continuity of identity and belief, but also warns that the same tendency can ossify. PB invokes Spinoza's value-neutral drive while considering a less cruel interpretation of animalizing imagination in Ashes and Snow; its comparison with Bergson's élan vital is local, not a proposed identity between concepts.
RB1 distinguishes the reported Spinozan essence from conscious desire and from the stake in outcomes reserved for self-maintaining systems. It describes biological, psychological and cultural applications while denying that conatus aims at universal complexity or progress. Its later naturalized conatus preserves retentive persistence without Spinoza's closure: organization carries a propensity to persevere within constrained openness. In the triadic account, persistence complements clinamen's variation; propensity supplies the account of cumulative bias. Neither endurance alone nor the vocabulary of striving establishes inevitable improvement.
Scope and attribution
The reported Spinozan principle is supported in AB, PB and RB1; the naturalized organizational treatment belongs to AB and RB1. PB is not assigned RB1's constrained-openness theory. RB2/RB3 organization passages are not credited as explicit conatus uses on thematic similarity alone.
AB — The Actual Book
Conatus names striving to maintain form without requiring Spinoza's entire metaphysics. Stars, cells and traditions exemplify different persistence modes. Reflective selfhood retains character and commitments, while mental conatus can ossify beliefs.
Occurrence locators: 55, 57, 61, 62, 68; Epigraph: 54; Thinker register: 232; Notes: 239, 240.
PB — The Possible Book
Conatus is Spinoza's value-neutral drive to persevere, locally compared with élan vital. The author invokes it while contrasting Lautréamont's aggressive bestiary with the animal mentors of Ashes and Snow, not to develop retentive physical organization.
Occurrence locators: 95; Reproduced historical essay: 199.
RB1 — The Real Book, Volume I: The Possible Is Real
Conatus is presented as the thing's essence, not generally conscious desire or a stake in outcomes. Biological and cultural applications are followed by denial of inherent progress. Naturalized conatus names constraint-enabled retentive persistence without Spinoza's deterministic closure.
Occurrence locators: 274, 277, 278, 279, 280, 286, 287, 288, 289, 304.
Background used in the editorial explanation
Domain-specific mechanisms and wider analogies remain distinguished. Original definitions retain their scope; local cross-references do not rewrite them. Named theories and mechanisms are distinguished from neighboring background, homonyms and the author’s own synthesis. Reproduced AI passages retain their separate voice.