Abstract
Abstract This chapter introduces Spinoza's theory of conatus or striving. It is argued that, despite a number of important historical precedents in Descartes, Hobbes, and the Stoics, Spinoza's theory is highly distinctive. One attractive interpretation, due principally to Curley, is that Spinoza's claim that we strive to persevere in being amounts to a kind of psychological egoism on which we all consciously desire, as much as we can, to persevere in being. The chapter raises questions about psychological egoism; about the relation between human desire and the affects, which are changes in the power of striving; and about the relation between perseverance and the affects in the ends of human desire.
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