"The Conatus of the Body in Spinoza's Physics"

Society and Politics. 2016. Vol. 10. P. 95–114.

Winkler S. P.

In Part 3 of his Ethics, Baruch Spinoza identifies the conatus of the mind as "will" and of the mind and body together as "appetite" / "desire," but he does not identify the conatus of the body. This omission is curious, given that he describes "motion-and-rest" and conatus in such ways that they appear to be one and the same thing. In this paper, however, I propose that motion-and-rest and conatus (in the attribute of extension) can be understood as two distinct aspects, relational and singular, of Spinoza's theory of the individuation of bodies. In Section 1, I explain Spinoza's account of the body. In Section 2, I reject the notion that the conatus of the body is a principle of rectilinear inertia. In Section 3, I indicate that besides the conatus, Spinoza uses other terms throughout his texts to denote the concept of striving, each of which alludes to a relational and singular aspect of his theory of individuation. In Section 4, I show that for Spinoza, motion-and-rest refers to the relational ("preindividual") aspect of the body and that conatus (in the attribute of extension) refers to the singular (individuated) aspect of the body.

Keywords: physics, inertia, body, motion, Spinoza, individuation, conatus, rest