/lit/ - Literature

>There is a beautiful theory in Leibniz, articulating the vectorial powers of the soul with those studied by dynamics: the theory of conatus. In both cases, conatus means that there is never any rest. Rest evokes a state that is indifferent to time, which is an impossibility for Leibniz. That is why every quiet soul and every immobile body are in fact "animated " by a "conatus," an effort toward the future to which no quantity may be assigned, and which cannot in itself have any effect. The conatus is "effort toward," perpetual disquiet. In physics, if a body is maintained at equilibrium, its conatus is the beginning, at each instant, of a movement that aborts in that instant, to be reborn in the following one. If equilibrium is broken, however, the conatus unfolds into motion. More generally, conatus designates the vectorial power insofar as it can never be "eliminated," but insofar as it does not have within itself the means to develop, since its development depends upon circumstances.

>Adventure: this is the term Whitehead proposes, where apocalyptic visions haunt our imaginations, where "art for art" or " the defense of society" clash in titanic combats that make the foundations of the earth tremble as their imprecations rise toward heaven. To combat pious, conformist, or hateful opinion is part of the risks of philosophy, but the test Whitehead proposes for philosophy is to fight it by "saving" it, by addressing it as if it were capable of participating in the adventure. Christians, Stoics, Nietzscheans, Kantians are all accepted together, with the co-presence of the others being part of the test for each. The irresponsibility of Cain, the creature of creativity, when he refuses to be his brother's keeper, and the responsibility that makes Quakers tremble when they live each of their acts as what conditions cosmic becoming: the point is not to oppose them, but to situate them in a mode such that their coexistence may be not a contradiction to be resolved but a fact to be celebrated.

>The fact that Whitehead speaks of function, not of freedom, with regard to God, of inexorable evaluation and not of enjoyment, of patience and not of decision, "simply " brings about a passage to the limit of the imperative of nonconfusion of categories between our "living values," what we care about, and importance as a generic category. Dance is important to fairies, and the salvation of mankind to Christ, but God does not let himself be described in terms of importance, only of appetite, which is perpetual and ever-renewed.

>Heaven dances with the fairies, and rips open when Christ dies.