Desire thus understood is for Spinoza man’s very essence insofar as it is conceived to be determined, from any given affection of it, to do something. Spinoza’s concept of desire is closely connected with the concept of conatus, which he sees as the very essence of finite individuals. To be an individual is, as we saw earlier, to be determined to act through the mediation of other finite modes, and likewise to determine those others. Since imagination is by definition the awareness of our own bodies together with others, this interaction between bodies essentially involves imagination. But this bodily awareness which is the very nature of imagination is also closely bound up with conatus. Bodies and minds, as finite individuals, struggle, of their very nature, to persist in being. Our bodies are not just passively moved by external forces. They have their own momentum – their own characteristic force for existing. But this is not something that individuals exert of their own power alone. For an individual to preserve itself in existence, as we have seen, is precisely for it to act and be acted upon in a multiplicity of ways. The more complex the individual body, the more ways in which it can be affected and affect other things. The power to imagine is thus integral to the continued existence and thriving of the individual. To define imagination in terms of bodily awareness, within the context of Spinoza’s philosophy, is to move imagination to the very centre of the story of human well-being and flourishing.
- Gatens, M., & Lloyd, G. (1999). Collective imaginings: Spinoza, past and present. London: UK: Routledge. p. 27.
It’s easier to see how (while extrapolating freely from Spinoza’s concepts, not from his philosophy) it would be possible to reconcile the idea of conatus as the struggle to persist in being, with attempts to alter, deteriorate, consume, degrade or break down a person’s own body and mind. People experiencing self destruction would be more individual than others, would be more exposed to their own affections. And in this sense, self destructive behavior doesn’t amount to going against one’s nature. It would underline a person’s strangeness to herself, her inability to recognize herself or to identify herself with an external world where other kinds of affections can be experienced.
