Conatus → Emotions
Discover how Spinoza derives all human emotions from one basic drive: the striving to persist in being. See how joy, sadness, and desire are not random feelings but expressions of your fundamental nature.
Steps
Setup
Proposition
The order of ideas and things is the sameMind and body are parallel expressions of one reality, never interacting as separate domains.
Proposition
The human mind is the idea of the human bodyEmotion is always embodied — the mind feels what the body undergoes because the mind is the idea of the body.
Proposition
Mind does not move body; body does not move mindThere is no causal arrow from body to mind or mind to body; emotional life must be understood within parallelism.
Proposition
Activity from adequate ideas; passivity from inadequate ideasThe active/passive distinction in emotion tracks the adequate/inadequate distinction in cognition.
Demonstration
Proposition
Nothing is destroyed except by an external causeSelf-destruction is impossible; every threat to a thing's existence comes from outside.
Proposition
Contraries cannot coexist when one can destroy the otherA thing opposes whatever could destroy it; contraries are structurally expelled.
Proposition
Everything endeavours to persist in its beingConatus — the striving to persist in being — is the fundamental drive from which all emotion will be derived.
Proposition
Conatus is the actual essence of the thingConatus is not a property of essence; it is essence itself, understood dynamically.
Proposition
Conatus involves indefinite durationConatus has no built-in endpoint; mortality comes only from external causes.
Proposition
The mind is conscious of its own strivingConscious striving is the subjective root of all emotional life.
Consequence
Proposition
Appetite and desireDesire is conscious appetite — the first primitive affect, and the origin of all valuation.
Proposition
The mind affirms the body's existenceThe mind's deepest structural commitment is affirming the body's existence.
Proposition
Changes in bodily power alter mental powerEmotion is the mind's awareness of increases and decreases in the body's power of acting.
Definition
Joy, sadness, desire: the three primary affectsAll emotions are compositions of three primitives: joy (power up), sadness (power down), and desire (conscious striving).
Bridge
Complex emotions as compositions of the primitivesEvery emotion can be parsed as a primitive affect (joy, sadness, desire) combined with a type of idea (adequate or inadequate, of self or other, of past, present, or future).
Recap
Recap
Passive affects from external determination; active affects from adequate causationThe path from emotional bondage to freedom runs through the transformation of inadequate ideas into adequate ones — turning passions into actions.
Concepts covered
You now see how all emotions trace back to conatus and the increase or decrease of your power. Passive affects trap you; active affects free you. This is Spinoza's psychology.