conatus

American  

[koh-ney-tuhs] / koʊˈneɪ təs /

noun

• conatus
  plural

1. an effort or striving.

2. a force or tendency simulating a human effort.

3. (in the philosophy of Spinoza) the force in every animate creature toward the preservation of its existence.

---

conatus British  

/ kəʊˈneɪtəs /

noun

1. an effort or striving of natural impulse

2. (esp in the philosophy of Spinoza) the tendency of all things to persist in their own being

---

Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• conatus
  plural

Etymology

Origin of conatus

1655–65; < Latin: exertion, equivalent to cōnā ( rī ) to attempt + -tus suffix of v. action

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

conatus

This conatus is afterwards continuous from the lands through the root even to outmosts, and from outmosts to firsts, wherein use itself is in its origin.

From Angelic Wisdom Concerning the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom by John Ager

Dialectic developments of the notion of self-preservation, of the conatus essendi, often ignore all the important facts of the actual process.

From Creative Intelligence Essays in the Pragmatic Attitude by Boyd H. Bode

And attraction, a kind of conatus accedendi, is the crown, according to the eighteenth century, of the series of secondary causes.

From Benjamin Franklin Representative selections, with introduction, bibliograpy, and notes by Chester E. Jorgenson

The image of the Infinite in these forms is plain from their conatus and power to fill the spaces of the whole world, and even of many worlds, to infinity.

From Angelic Wisdom Concerning the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom by John Ager

And as the human form is made up of all the things there are in man, it follows that love or the will is in a continual conatus and effort to form all these.

From Angelic Wisdom Concerning the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom by John Ager