This paper will deal with the notion of conatus (endeavor) and the role it plays in Hobbes’s program for natural philosophy. As defined by Hobbes, the conatus of a body is essentially its instantaneous motion, and he sees this as the means to account for a variety of phenomena in both natural philosophy and mathematics. Although I foucs principally on Hobbesian physics, I will also consider the extent to which Hobbes’s account of conatus does important explanatory work in his theory of human perception, psychology, and political philosophy. I argue that, in the end, there are important limitations in Hobbes’s account of conatus, but that Leibniz adapted the concept in important ways in developing his science of dynamics.

中文翻译：

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霍布斯论“Conatus”：霍布斯哲学基础研究

本文将讨论 conatus（努力）的概念以及它在霍布斯的自然哲学纲领中所起的作用。正如霍布​​斯所定义的那样，物体的轮廓本质上是它的瞬时运动，他认为这是解释自然哲学和数学中各种现象的手段。虽然我主要关注霍布斯物理学，但我也会考虑霍布斯对 conatus 的描述在他的人类感知、心理学和政治哲学理论中所做的重要解释工作的程度。我认为，最终，霍布斯对 conatus 的解释存在重要的局限性，但莱布尼茨在发展他的动力学科学时以重要的方式改编了这个概念。