O Conatus de Spinoza: auto-conservação ou liberdade?

The aim of this paper is to discuss an ambiguity of Spinoza’s conatus, that seems to sustain, at the same time, a “self-preservation” and a “liberty” ethics. We start by showing why the attempts of several authors to conciliate these two aspects fail, and then we argue that the only way to solve this problem is to consider that what must “stay in existence” isn’t the empirical individual of the common sense, but his “individuality”, related to a specific proportion of motion and rest that corresponds to his essence. To sustain this thesis, we’ll analyse Spinoza’s conatus, showing that it can’t consist only of physical elements, but it’s also a metaphysical principle, relating finite beings to the power of God. Only from this formal concept it would be possible to understand why the primordial striving for “self-preservation” leads to an ethics of liberty.