In early philosophies of
psychology and
metaphysics,
conatus (;
Latin for "effort; endeavor; impulse, inclination, tendency; undertaking; striving") is an innate inclination of a thing to continue to exist and enhance itself. This "thing" may be
mind,
matter or a combination of both. Over the millennia, many different definitions and treatments have been formulated. Seventeenth-century philosophers
René Descartes,
Baruch Spinoza,
Gottfried Leibniz, and
Thomas Hobbes made important contributions. The
conatus may refer to the instinctive "will to live" of living organisms or to various metaphysical theories of
motion and
inertia. Often the concept is associated with
God's will in a
pantheist view of
Nature. The concept may be broken up into separate definitions for the mind and body and split when discussing
centrifugal force and inertia.
