Philosophy of Conatus
“The effort to persevere in its being “
Philosophy of Conatus
This is how the philosopher Baruch Spinoza defined the concept of Conatus in 1677 in Ethics.
Conatus is ethics in the sense of the exercise of a martial art.
It is also an asceticism.
The Conatus of an individual or a group is the effort to persevere in its being.
That is to say, to increase one’s power to act, and increase one’s power to enter into relationships with individuals or groups who participate in increasing this power to act.
Human societies are fields where forces, individual or collective wills, meet, compose and ally or clash and decompose.
An individual or a social group in a situation of discrimination or deprivation of rights is always in relation to a will or a force, or a set of forces, entered into a relationship with it which breaks it down, which reduces its power to act, and prevents him from persevering in his being.


The suffering and sadness, the resignation, experienced by an individual or a group in a situation of injustice does not find its cause in the individual or the group in question but in the power relationship that is exercised over him in the process. ‘weakening.
There is no situation of injustice without the exercise of local power which is the cause.
There is no justice without the exercise of a reconstructed power to act, increased by the new relations into which it has entered, with the wills to which it has allied itself, and which gives it the power to achieve its power and exercise its right by transforming the relationship of forces.
An individual or a social group increases its power to act, restores justice, takes possession of its rights by exercising this ethic, of the increase in power, of the tactical organization of encounters.
Conatus practices and teaches an ethic of organization and political action.