Some Remarks on Spinoza's Concept of Potentia
Some Remarks on Spinoza's Concept of Potentia
Spinoza’s Ethics is, at its core, a philosophy of power or potentia — the ontological and immanent power of being, acting, persevering, and affecting or being affected. Conceptually distinct from the juridical and institutional power (potestas) detailed in the Theological-Political Treatise and the Political Treatise, potentia signifies the causal power intrinsic to existence itself.
Potentia or being-able-ness
Potentia derives from the Latin adjective potens (“being able, capable, powerful”), itself from the verb posse (“to be able”). So potentia literally means “the being-able‑ness,” the capacity to act, the power inherent in a thing’s nature. For Spinoza, existence is inseparable from this striving power, such that “each thing, insofar as it is in itself, strives to persevere in its being.”
The inner striving of a thing becomes real in the world through determinate activity, when its internal power is expressed outwardly in concrete patterns of activity and relation. Potentia is therefore the measure of a thing’s causal power, a measure of how fully a being’s intrinsic capacities are being enacted. A being that appears self-destructive is therefore not acting from its own nature but is being overpowered by an external cause that diminishes its intrinsic potentia.
The power by which a thing strives to persevere is therefore not something added to it from without, but is the very power of God or Nature expressed in a finite mode. As Spinoza puts it, the power whereby a thing, “and consequently man, preserves his being, is the very power of God or Nature.” In Spinoza’s ontology, a finite thing has no being apart from the degree to which it manifests or expresses God or Nature.
Because all things are in God, and God’s power is expressed in all things, potentia cannot be conceived as a force exercised over beings but as what beings are, the degree to which a mode expresses the divine nature from within. This has profound theological consequences: power is not something God has over beings. Thus when Spinoza writes “posse existere potentia est” — “to be able to exist is power” — he means that existence itself is an index of how much of God’s infinite power is actualized in a particular finite form.
A being, then, exists to the extent that it expresses God; and it expresses God to the extent that it exists:
Since ability to exist is power, it follows that the more reality belongs to the nature of some thing, the more power it will have to exist; and accordingly a being absolutely infinite, or God, has an absolutely infinite power of existence, and on that account absolutely exists.
Potentia, endeavor, and essence
A recurring term in Ethics is essence, the ‘what it is to be and what it can become’ of a thing. Endeavour is that essence as activity: the striving by which a thing persists and expresses itself. According to Spinoza, “the endeavor wherewith a thing endeavors to persist in its being is nothing else than the actual essence of that thing.” A mode’s essence is a capacity to act, a structured power to affect and be affected. Potentia, then, is the degree to which a mode actualizes its essence. Actualizing one’s essence and manifesting God’s power are not two different processes but the same ontological fact viewed from two sides. To actualize that essence is simply for the thing to exercise those capacities: to enter relations that enhance its ability to persist, to think or move or feel in ways that increase its power.
If endeavor is the striving by which a thing persists and expresses itself, then potentia is the effectiveness of this striving, the extent to which its essence achieves actuality. Existence, another important term in Spinoza’s lexicon, is nothing other than this actuality itself, the realized expression of a thing's power. In Spinoza’s formulation, “to be able to exist is power,” meaning that existence is nothing over and above the actual expression of potentia.
To conclude, then, this immanent conception of power provides the foundation of Spinoza's Ethics, uniting metaphysics, psychology, and ethics in a single ontological insight: every finite thing is a determinate expression of substance's infinite power of self-activity. The same potentia that constitutes God's infinite essence is expressed in finite modes as their own striving to persevere and enhance the capacity to act.
Bibliography
Spinoza, Baruch [Benedict]. Ethics. Ed. & Tr., G.H.R. Parkinson. London: J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd (1989).
