@philosophyminis: Do you ever worry about terrible things that haven't happened yet, and may not even happen at all? Do you invent catastrophes and live anxiously in your own head? Well, Spinoza might be able to help. Here is his theory in three steps. First, Spinoza argues that so much misery is caused by despair, because despair, for Spinoza, is when we lose faith in our own ability to carry on. It's when we see and define ourselves by weakness. It's when we think that we will fail at whatever life happens to throw at us. And second, Spinoza argues that in the fabric of all living things, there is a drive to persist, to persevere, and to carry on living. It's a drive that he called ‘conatus.’ Of course, someday something will eventually kill you, but until that time, conatus will pull you through. And so Spinoza thinks that despair is irrational. It's a self-hating, deceptive voice that hides your own power from yourself. It's a kind of faithlessness. It's a lack of trust in your own resolve. It's when you are blind to your own capacity to endure. The lesson of Spinoza's conatus is to remember that humans have been through a lot, and we are still here. We can live in waterless deserts and in oxygen-poor mountains. We have been broken, and beaten, and battered, and bruised, and we are still standing. What doesn't kill you might not always make you stronger, but as long as you are still alive, you can still carry on.

Jonny Thomson

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Tuesday 16 June 2026 14:26:09 GMT