Conatus as Viability: Spinoza’s Ethics and the Geometry of Persistence

Abstract

This paper reconstructs Spinoza’s Ethics as a formal theory of viable dynamical systems. It argues that conatus, the striving of each thing to persevere in its being, can be expressed as a viability constraint: the condition that the expected rate of persistence, E[dP/dt], remains non-negative. Within this framework, power (potentia) corresponds to a system’s viability function P(x, t), affect to its temporal derivative dP/dt, adequate ideas to predictive models that enhance expected viability, and freedom to the invariance of viability-optimizing behavior under perturbation. Extending this principle to collective and computational systems reveals an ethical and cognitive symmetry: actions and understandings that increase viability are virtuous, while those that diminish it are destructive. The resulting ontology identifies being with organization rather than substance, yielding a form of structural realism consistent with modern systems theory and the free-energy principle. Spinoza’s Ethics thus anticipates a geometry of persistence—a unified account of existence, cognition, and value grounded in the dynamics of self-maintaining systems.