Sophia

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-019-0712-y

The Force of Existence. Looking

for Spinoza in Heidegger

Kasper Lysemose 1

# Springer Nature B.V. 2019

Abstract
In the perhaps most decisive reopening of philosophy in the twentieth century, Hei-
degger presented an existential analytic. This can be viewed as the highly complex
analysis of one simple action: being-there (Dasein). In the paper at hand, a Spinozist
interpretation of this action is proposed. This implies a shift in the Aristotelian
conceptuality, which, to a large extent, informs Heidegger’s analysis. The action of
being-there is not a movement from potentiality (δύναμις) to actuality (ἐνέργεια). It is
a force of existence (vis existendi). However, this force is located right at the threshold
between potentiality and actuality. Accordingly, it is not a matter of dismissing
Aristotle’s concepts, but—with Heidegger—to observe carefully their deconstruction
and pursue it to the point where these concepts become indistinct and where—beyond
Heidegger—a Spinozian force of existence emerges.

Keywords Heidegger . Spinoza . Drive . Force . Actuality . Potentiality

Heidegger and Spinoza (Opening)

At the end of a paper on ‘Originary Ethics,’ Jean-Luc Nancy makes the following observation:

By claiming the title Boriginary ethics^ and by identifying it with a Bfundamental

ontology^ prior to every ontological and ethical partition of philosophy,

Is being [das Sein] imparted to the individual modes [Weisen] in such a way that by this imparting [Mitteilung]
it in fact parts itself out, although in this parting out [Verteilung] it is not partitioned [zerteilt] in such a way
that, as divided, it falls apart and loses its proper essence, its unity? Might the unity of being lie precisely in this
imparting parting out [mitteilende Verteilung]? And if so, how would and could something like that happen?
What holds sway in this event [Was waltet in diesem Geschehen]? (These are questions after Being and Time!)
(Heidegger (1995b, p. 25)—translation slightly modified.)

* Kasper Lysemose

1
Copenhagen S, Denmark
 K. Lysemose

Heidegger cannot but have kept deliberately quiet about the only major work of
philosophy entitled Ethics that is itself an Bontology^ as well as a Blogic^ and an
Bethics.^ His silence about Spinoza is well known, but it is doubtless here that it
is most deafening. There would be lots to say about this …1

The present paper takes its cue here. The issue is, as Nancy indicates, immense.
Nevertheless, the research literature on Heidegger seems by and large to have followed
him in his silence on Spinoza. It will be my main goal here to propose a point of entry
to the discussion, well aware that much will remain to be said.
Heidegger writes about Spinoza only twice. The first time is in his 1926/27 Marburg
lectures on History of Philosophy from Thomas Aquinas to Kant. These lectures appear
to have been purely a matter of duty.2 We encounter here long quotes not penetrated
philosophically but accompanied with an unusual amount of biographical information.
The second time is in the 1936 lectures on Schelling’s Treatise on the Essence of
Human Freedom. Spinoza is presented here as part in the emergence of the modern
concept of system and Heidegger’s evaluation of his contribution is as short as it is
unfavorable.3 Knowing how strong a reader Heidegger is, both places amount to
somewhat of a disappointment.4
On the one hand, this source material makes a comparison between Heidegger and
Spinoza difficult. We do not have much text to go by, and the text we do have does not get us
very far. On the other hand, this very circumstance forces us—and frees us—to think: what
is really at stake? Is it just a matter of Heidegger and Spinoza being master thinkers and so—
by some thoughtless line of scholarly reasoning—they should be compared? Or is there a
genuine issue to develop? Let us look at our hint from Nancy again!
Spinoza develops an ontology which he calls an ethics. The suggestion from Nancy
is that this may help us see that what Heidegger, on his part, calls (fundamental)
ontology is in fact an (originary) ethics. This is at first not much more than a mirroring
of philosophical labels. What it indicates, though, is that both Spinoza and Heidegger
claim to speak from a place ‘prior’ to the distinction between ontology and ethics—
between being and well-being in terms of Greek antiquity, between realitas and
perfectio in terms of Latin scholastics, between facts and norms in terms of modern
discourse theory.5 If this is indeed the place of an originary ethicality of existence, then
an encounter between Heidegger and Spinoza should perhaps be situated here?
Following this hint, it might be possible to unearth a subterranean line from
Spinoza’s concept of conatus as in suo esse perseverare to Heidegger’s concept of
Dasein as Seindes, dem es in seinem Sein um dieses selbst geht? After all, the similarity
between these two formulae is striking. Is this just a superficial coincidence? Or could

1
Nancy (2003, p. 195)
2
Cf. Heidegger (2006, p. 243).
3
Cf. Heidegger (1985, 33–34).
4
Spinoza appears also in ‘The Onto-theo-logical Constitution of Metaphysics,’ but only through Hegel’s
criticism; and he is briefly mentioned in the Metaphysical Foundations of Logic, but only as lacking behind
Leibniz in determining the concept of substance.
5
The concept of indistinction plays an important methodological role in the present analysis. I keep it implicit
here and propose to develop it elsewhere. It can be said, however, that it functions similarly to what Agamben
calls Barcheological epochē^ (cf. Agamben (2009, p. 90)).
The Force of Existence. Looking for Spinoza in Heidegger

Spinoza’s analysis of conatus turn out to be a version avant la lettre of Heidegger’s

existential analytic of Dasein?
In the most recent and concluding volume of his grand Homo Sacer-project, The Use
of Bodies, Agamben allows the Spinozian undercurrent, which seems to have been
underway in his thinking for some time now, to become a bit more visible. In this
regard—and akin to Nancy—Agamben also notices the unexpressed complicity be-
tween Heidegger and Spinoza.

It is not possible here to specify the reasons that drove Heidegger not to make the
modal character of his ontology explicit. It is probable that it was precisely his
prolonged adherence to the Aristotelian apparatus that did not allow him to understand
that the ontological difference must be completely resolved into the being-modes
relation. In any case, it is a matter of the same difficulty that constrained him to avoid
up to the end a confrontation with the philosophy of Spinoza.6

It may well turn out that what Agamben says here about Heidegger applies equally to
his own thinking. Leaving this matter aside, though, Agamben elicits our guiding
questions: what if Being and Time had been written not as an interpretation of
Aristotle—as some hyperbolically, but not without considerable truth, claim to be the
case?7 What if it had been written instead as an interpretation of Spinoza? What would
the ensuing existential analytic have looked like? In what terms would it have had to re-
describe the action of being-there? And would this, as Agamben suggests, have
reconfigured Heidegger’s ontological difference into a modal ontology?
The answer to these questions entails a Heideggerian reading of Spinoza as an existential
analyst on the one hand, and a Spinozian ‘correction’ of Heidegger’s existential analytic on the
other. The whole endeavor would ultimately amount to a re-writing of Being and Time.
Obviously, it is necessary to accommodate this to something feasible and proceed in a much
more modest fashion. In what follows, I shall therefore simply present some textual findings.
More precisely, I would like to show how we may come to observe Spinoza emerge from
within some of Heidegger’s writings from the period just after Being and Time. This means
that I will not present an independent interpretation of Spinoza’s texts but rather pinpoint where
he can be excavated in Heidegger’s. In other words, I am not pretending to offer the much-
desired comparative analysis of Spinoza and Heidegger. My aim is only to provide some
groundwork that may facilitate it. To that end, I assume the role of a reader of Heidegger who
extends an invitation to the Spinoza scholar. I would like to add, though, how—to my mind at
least—the hermeneutical aspirations of a future comparative analysis should be attuned.
The task of such an analysis cannot only be to sort out similarities and differences. The
ultimate goal will be to extricate a philosophical contribution that can perhaps no longer
simply be said to be Heidegger’s or Spinoza’s. Granted, in a comparative analysis the
amicable ambition of the Heidegger scholar and the Spinoza scholar, who aims to establish
the meaning of Heidegger’s and Spinoza’s texts, respectively, should not be abandoned. This
6
Agamben (2016, p. 175).
7
That it was meticulous analyzes of Aristoteles which above all preceded the conception of Being and Time is
well-know (cf. Ricoeur 1992 who references Remi Brague for the view that: BHeidegger’s major work is the
substitute for a work on Aristotle that did not see the light of day^ (p. 311)). To Gadamer, the young Heidegger
appeared as an Aristoteles redivivus (cf. Pongratz (1977, p. 69)).
 K. Lysemose

ambition must, however, be subordinated to another use of the texts.8 Indeed, what should
the point of a comparative analysis be if not to push the texts into saying what they could not
have said when interpreted separately?
It is in this methodological spirit that I will be looking for Spinoza in Heidegger.
However, as anyone familiar with the paradox of Meno will know, we must have at least
a preliminary idea about what we are looking for. Otherwise we will be unable to recognize
it, even if we bump right into it.9 So, which Spinoza are we looking for? Here we encounter a
hugely differentiated and rapidly growing field of contemporary Spinoza scholarship to
which we should add the even wider historical trajectory of Spinoza interpretations. It is easy
to become disorientated in this situation. However, it would not only be difficult, but, more
importantly, counterproductive to our purpose to try to single out the one Spinoza that can
best be conflated doctrinally with Heidegger. The point of a comparative analysis is that we
do not yet know the Spinoza or the Heidegger that will emerge from it. What is needed to
facilitate such an analysis, therefore, is rather to open a philosophical field where Spinoza
and Heidegger can be related thematically. As already indicated, I suggest that this field
should be the existential analytic of Heidegger but analyzed with an ontology of force that
relies on the Spinozian paradigm of conatus rather than the Aristotelian paradigm of
potentiality. The Spinoza we are looking for is therefore the Spinoza who is first and
foremost a thinker of force.
That Spinoza is a thinker of force is rather uncontroversial. However, it is Deleuze
who, more than any other, has highlighted and developed this aspect.10 The Spinoza we

8
I use the word Buse^ with reference to Spinoza’s own radical hermeneutical principle, according to which
words gain their meaning solely from their use: BVerba ex solo usu certam habent significationem.^ (cf.
Spinoza (2007, p. 165)). Just as there are no occult powers in nature, there is no hidden meaning behind the
surface of the text. There is only the encounter between text and reader and the effects this produces. In this
regard cf. Montag (1999, p. 21–25).
9
Cf. Plato (1997, 80d).
10
Deleuze (1988, p. 104). Deleuze, of course, is not alone in highlighting this aspect, which has informed the
French Spinoza-reception at large. This reception has been framed by the alternative Hegel or Spinoza (so the
title of Macherey’s important 1979 book). From the impetus of the few remarks on Spinoza made by
Macherey’s mentor, Louis Althusser, a trajectory of Spinozian (sub)versions of Marxism has emerged. This
trajectory includes, e.g., Antonio Negris The Savage Anomaly: The Power of Spinoza’s Metaphysics and
Politics (1981) and Etienne Balibar’s Spinoza and Politics (1985). In that context Spinoza’s Bontology of
power^—to deploy Alexandre Matheron’s expression—has obviously been addressed in its political sense.
Incidentally, Foucault’s concurrent analysis of power could very well be assessed in this context also, and if
Spinoza is largely absent in Foucault, the Spinozist undercurrent of his analysis may become more detectable
if one reads Deleuze’s 1986 book on his friend, simply titled Foucault (cf. Casarino (2018) and Juniper and
Jose (2018)). As for the anglophone reception, it is the merit of Valtteri Viljanen’s 2011 book on Spinoza’s
Geometry of Power to have offered a full interpretation that puts power at the center stage. This achievement
has ignited a still ongoing debate among Spinoza-scholars on the genealogy of Spinoza’s conception of power,
on the way power is imparted from substance to modes, and how power relates to surrounding—and to some
extent interchangeable—concepts in Spinoza’s metaphysics such as essence, causality, conatus and virtue (cf.
e.g. Lærke (2011) and Sangiacomo (2015)). This recent discussion addresses power in its metaphysical more
than its political sense. Lærke, for instance, argues that Spinoza’s ontology of power must be summoned as the
suitable framework for understanding the pivotal in-relation of Spinoza’s metaphysics. He opposes this to the
purely conceptualist framework provided by Michael Della Rocca’s interpretation (cf., e.g. Della Rocca
(2008)). However, Lærke concludes with the observation that even if his argument is successful, it does not
explicate what power is or means (2011, p. 462). It is to this remaining question that the present paper
proposes a Heideggerian response. The suggestion is that the kind of power entailed could fruitfully be
interpreted as (a better take on) what Heidegger in 1927 called potentiality-of-being (Seinkönnen). This shifts
once again the way power is addressed: neither politically nor metaphysically but rather existentially—and in
this sense as ‘force of existence.’
The Force of Existence. Looking for Spinoza in Heidegger

are looking for is thus informed by—but not restricted to—Deleuze’s interpretation.
From a scholarly point of view, this interpretation remains controversial, granted, but
not simply dismissible. Even if it is audacious, it is still taken into account both for its
scholarly merits and, surely, for its philosophical strength. As for the present paper, it
will no doubt be discernable that Deleuze is looming large in the background.
Having acknowledged that, I will proceed now as follows: In a first step, I will
sketch a preliminary idea of Spinoza’s thinking that should be clear enough to orient
our endeavor and, at the same time, open enough to allow for the intervention not just
of a very particular interpretation of Spinoza but of a broader spectrum of Spinoza
scholars (‘Preliminary Remarks on Spinoza’).11 Upon these preliminaries, I turn to the
main part on Heidegger and the attempt to trace here what I propose—with Spinoza—
to call a force of existence (‘Potentiality and Actuality,’ ‘Drive and Conatus,’ and
‘Disinhibition and Inhibition’). Finally, I conclude with some indication towards an
existential interpretation of this force (‘Potentiality-of-Being and Responsibility
(Conclusion)’).

Preliminary Remarks on Spinoza

Spinoza’s ontology is well known: a single substance and its multiple modes. Sub-
stance is in itself; modes are in something else. This is clearly stated in the very first
axiom of the Ethics: ‘All things that are, are either in themselves [in se] or in something
else [in alio].’12 Being always has one of these two senses. Nevertheless, the keystone
of Spinoza’s thinking is—as Deleuze has pointed out—the univocity of being.13 Being
has one sense only. The contradiction here, however, is merely apparent. In fact, it is
easily seen that being in the case of substance as well as in the case of modes has the
sense of ‘in.’ Being is being-in. This is Spinoza’s doctrine of immanence. The gist of
this doctrine—which, again, Deleuze has developed—is that immanence does not
mean being contained in something. And this goes both for substance and modes.
Substance is neither a very big container that contains everything else, nor is it itself
contained in something—not even in itself. If substance should contain anything
(including itself), it would need to confine this within limits. Substance would then
itself be defined as being-in-that-which-is-not-itself and would, by that very token, be a
mode. Substance, therefore, cannot contain anything. Accordingly, modes—whose
whole being is a being in substance—are in an immanence that does not contain them.
In other words, modes are exposed through and through.14
Being-in as said of substance means that nothing is contained. Being-in as said of modes
means that everything is exposed. Nevertheless, when being-in is said of substance and of
modes, it is said in the same sense. The univocal sense of this ontological difference is the
sive of Spinoza’s famous deus sive natura. Modes, on the one hand, are nothing apart from
substance. They are precisely modifications of substance. Substance, on the other hand, is

11
Obviously, I cannot address Spinoza scholarship very comprehensibly. My main concern is the presentation
of Heidegger. In order to extent the invitation properly, however, I will let this section be accompanied with
some indications at the level of footnotes.
12
Spinoza (2006, IAx1).
13
Cf. Deleuze (1988, p. 63).
14
Cf. Nancy (2008, p. 61).
 K. Lysemose

neither inside, underneath, behind or above the modes. Substance is nowhere outside its
modification. Spinoza’s sive thus means that substance imparts itself wholly in the modes as
the infinite surface of their exposition. It could be said—a bit tongue-in-cheek—that
substance is the ‘wide’ of the whole wide world.
One of the most salient features of Spinoza’s thinking is that Spinoza analyzes this
sive in terms of force. Each mode is imparted with a force of existence—a vis
existendi—which it modifies in a certain and definite manner.15 Spinoza considers this
force both under the aspect of eternity and duration. The centerpiece of this analysis is
the doctrine of conatus which, in Latin, states that: ‘Unaquaeque res, quantum in se est,
in suo esse perseverare conatur.’16 Each thing endeavors to persevere in its being—but
the enigmatic interjection poses interpretative problems that still puzzle Spinoza
scholars.17 Does quantum in se est mean as much as it is in itself (remembering that
being is being-in and that being-in-itself is the definition of substance); or does it mean
as much as it has in itself (of something which Spinoza then leaves unspecified here)? In
both cases, I would suggest that we should apply the notion of force of existence. Force
of existence expresses the extent to which a being is in itself (which equals the extent to
which it is imparted with substantial being);18 and force of existence expresses that
which enables a being to strive for the perseverance in being (according to the amount it
has of this force). Conatus, in short, is determined both as and by force of existence.19
15
In the Ethics, Spinoza speaks of vis existendi only infrequently (cf. ,e.g., Spinoza (2006, IP7 and IP14)). For
the most part, he employs the term agendi potentia—but synonymously with vis existendi (‘… agendi potentia
sive existendi,’ cf. Spinoza (2006, The General Definition of Emotions, IIIExp)). I prefer the former expression
in this context since it reflects better, on a terminological level, that Spinoza is in fact un-working the way
power and force is conceptualized in the Aristotelian framework. Di Poppa is right in pointing out that ‘…
essence is potentia as power and activity, not potentia as potentiality.’ (2010, p. 277).
16
Spinoza (2006, IIIP6).
17
Cf. Garret (2002, p. 149) and Viljanen (2011, p. 72).
18
Cf. the epigraph of the present paper.
19
In his paper on ‘the ontology of determination,’ Sangiacomo offers an erudite account of the genealogy of
Spinoza’s conception of the force associated with conatus (cf. Sangiacomo (2015)). Sangiacomo demonstrates
that Spinoza, in his presentation of The Principles of Cartesian Philosophy, introduces a distinction between
Bforce of motion^ and Bforce of determination^ which is then generalized in the Ethics as conatus and power
of acting (potentia agendi). Leaving the intricacies of the genealogy behind, the point of the matter is that this
distinction allows Spinoza to resolve an otherwise threatening contradiction between the inner causal activity
of modes on account of their essences and the external causality that thoroughly determines modes not only to
produce the effects they produce but even to come into existence at all. According to Spinoza, then, each mode
is endowed with a conatus—which generalizes the force of motion—by which it brings about the persever-
ance in its being. This is the essence of a mode (which, since it is wholly causally effective in this way, is never
a mere possible being). When a mode, however, enters existence, due to a certain external causality, the causal
account of its encounters with other existing modes needs to refer not only to the conatus but also to a power
of acting which generalizes the force of determination. In the Cartesian setting, Spinoza introduces force of
determination to explain the direction of movement of a physical body in interaction with other bodies.
Whereas force of motion does not in itself have such a direction, the force of determination does and this
direction is explained by the degree of contrariety of the collisions into which it enters. The pivotal point,
however, is that the force of determination is not another force than the force of motion, but rather a mode of it.
In the generalized metaphysics of the Ethics, this means that we can account for the same force in two distinct
ways, i.e., intrinsically and in encounters. If we add that this distinction may ultimately be rooted in the
distinction between eternity and duration, it will be tenable that the overall conception of force conveyed by
Sangiacomo is not irreconcilable with the present paper, even if the existential context proposed here is
justifiably absent from Sangiacomo’s more scholarly account. The commonality is that a distinction—the
terminological expression of which we may leave undecided—is evoked such that it is possible to say that the
force of a mode is perfectly exercised all the while being modified in encounters that enhances or inhibits it
and thus gives rise to joyous or sad passions.
The Force of Existence. Looking for Spinoza in Heidegger

Let us bear in mind that the stakes in the doctrine of conatus are in fact rather high.
According to an influential study by Hans Blumenberg, the in suo esse perseverare not
only introduced a new rational principle, but the principle of a new rationality which, in
turn, became responsible for the very configuration of modernity.20 The principle found
various articulations within different fields of inquiry—e.g., ethics (Telesio), politics
(Hobbes), and physics (Newton). Spinoza, however, gave it its ontological and univer-
sal form. What did this principle mean? A significant trajectory in modern philosophy
is devoted to providing a positive answer to this question. In order to arrive at a tenable
self-understanding, modernity had to work out the meaning of its own principle. This
was not a given since—still following Blumenberg—the declaration of it was a
countermove to the syndrome of theological absolutism.21 As such, the determination
of the principle was at first merely negative. Nevertheless, from this, it is already
possible to gain some valuable orientation.
Theological absolutism is a cluster of doctrines derived from an extreme emphasis
on the omnipotence of God. Such doctrines—advanced forcefully in late medieval
scholasticism—were, for instance, the voluntarism of God, the contingency of the
world and the nominalism of concepts. At the pinnacle of these doctrines was a certain
idea of creatio continua. Not only did this idea entail that God created ex nihilo but also
that only if God continued to do so would creation avoid annihilation. Left by itself the
world would immediately turn into nothing. In other words, the doctrine amounted to
the suggestion that all created being was stripped of any power of being and thoroughly
left at the mercy of transitive preservation.
It is clear that creatio and conservatio in this way became equivalent in theological
absolutism. The formation of the modern concept of self-preservation (conservatio sui),
on the contrary, set out by drawing a distinction here. This made it possible to assert
that created being was in fact invested with a power of being without implying that this
power amounted to a power of self-creation. But what kind of power was it then? The
doctrine of conatus can be seen as an answer to this question. Broadly speaking, it has
been given two diverging interpretations: the teleological and the inertial.
The teleological interpretation is informed by the historical view that the doctrine of
conatus is basically a reception of stoic philosophy. In his book on The Lives and Opinions
of Eminent Philosophers, Diogenes Laërtius writes that nature, according to the stoics, first
and foremost endears every living being to itself.22 The ontological structure of a living
being is thus self-preservative. This structure is furthermore teleological in as much as it
implies that the ultimate telos of a living being is its own being. Since Aristotle, the question
of mere being had been relegated to the household management (οἶκος). It is not surprising,
then, to see that the stoics developed their notion of self-preservation as a question of
oikeiôsis. This notion proved to be quite complex. It is evident, though, that the stoics
thought of it in terms of an organism.23 It is the organism with its inner accord between the
whole and its parts that displays the teleological modus operandi of oikeiôsis. Importantly,

20
Cf. Blumenberg (1976, p. 144). Even if they accounted differently for the genesis of the principle,
Blumenberg and Dieter Henrich were in agreement that Heidegger was the great anti-modern thinker. A line
from Spinoza to Heidegger—as suggested here—might therefore prompt us to revisit the discussion on
subjectivity and self-preservation from the 1970s (cf. Ebeling 1976).
21
Cf. Blumenberg (1983, p. 125–227).
22
Cf. Diogenes Laërtius (1853, p. 290).
23
On oikeiôsis, cf. Forschner (1981, p. 142–159).
 K. Lysemose

however, all living beings must die. As for cosmos—which the stoics thought of as an all-
encompassing organism—so for each living being: the fire would burn out (ἐκπύρωσιςit).
The immediate implication of this is that life ultimately cannot preserve itself in the oikeiôsis
of any particular living being. It needs, for its re-ignition, the transitive aid of the cosmic fire.
This, in turn, only shifted the problem, as the skeptics did not fail to object. If the fire of the
cosmic organism is likewise extinguished, from where should cosmos then itself receive the
fire for its own re-birth (παλιγγενεσία)?24
In Blumenberg’s account, the stoic notion of oikeiôsis does not suffice to express the
power of being that was asserted against theological absolutism. The reception of stoicism—
which is undeniable in early modernity in general and also specifically in Spinoza—even
works against the notion of conatus. As the skeptic objection exposes, the self-preservation
of stoic oikeiôsis relies ultimately on transitive preservation and creation. What is asserted by
Spinoza, on the contrary, is a force of existence that, so to speak, never runs dry. The
propositions immediately leading up to the doctrine of the conatus state that there is nothing
in a thing that works towards the destruction of it and, accordingly, that nothing can be
annihilated except by external causes.25 Seen from within, each being is thus an incessant
power to remain in being. Force of existence designates in this sense an immanent infinity.26
The inertial reading of conatus better expresses this part of the doctrine. Blumenberg
gravitates towards this interpretation when he describes the modern paradigm of self-
preservation as a principle of the exclusion of certain questions (Ausschließungsprinzip
von Fragen).27 What the new rationality should explain is not why something is, but
rather why it ceases to be; not why it is as it is, but rather why it changes. It is not
difficult to sense that Newton’s concept of inertia could be viewed as a particular use of
this kind of rationality. Conversely, the ensuing mechanistic physics of external
causation is often seen as being anticipated by Spinoza. Nevertheless, teleology proved
surprisingly difficult to get rid of.
If we look at current Spinoza research, we will find not only that the doctrine of
conatus is a central concern but also that teleology remains at the heart of the dispute.
As Valtteri Viljanen writes: ‘There are two competing overall readings of the nature and
meaning of the conatus doctrine. Here the issue of teleology draws the line of division:
roughly speaking, one approach is for it, the other against.’28 The attraction of the non-

24
Cf. Sommer (1976, p. 345–349).
25
Cf. Spinoza (2006, IIIPIV, IIIPV).
26
Cf. Spinoza (2006, IIIPVIII).
27
Cf. Blumenberg (1976, p. 188).
28
Viljanen (2011, p. 105). Similarly, Renz (2008, p. 317). With his meticulous analysis of ‘Teleology in
Spinoza’ (1999), Don Garret has provided a pivotal contribution to the debate. A recurrent point in Garret—
which was already raised by Edwin Curley vis-à-vis Jonathan Bennet (cf. Curley (1990))—is that a contextual
analysis of Spinoza’s claim that ‘… all final causes are nothing but human fictions’ reveals that this apparently
universal rejection is in fact limited to all final causes ascribed to God (cf. Garrett (1999, p. 315) and Spinoza
(2006, I, Appendix)). If this is true, Spinoza’s rejection of final causes need not preclude non-theological
applications of teleological modes of explanations—for instance anthropological ones. However, this does not
necessitate them either and some scholars have maintained that the gist of Spinoza’s anthropology remains
non-teleological. A central concern here is how the doctrine of conatus itself should be read. For some, it is
almost self-evidently teleological (cf. Garrett (1999, p. 313) and Sangiacomo (2016, p. 396)). Others have
defended an inertial or otherwise non-teleological reading (cf. Carriero (2011) and Viljanen (2011)). Without
denying the meaningfulness and relevance of assessing whether conatus is teleologically structured or not, the
contention in this paper—as will appear—is that an important aspect of the conatus doctrine is lost in this
interpretative grid.
The Force of Existence. Looking for Spinoza in Heidegger

teleological readings is that Spinoza explicitly—and quite resolutely—rejects teleology.

Teleological readings are therefore in a certain sense counter-readings. They show that
teleology is somehow smuggled in through the backdoor. As already Nietzsche warned:
‘In short, here as elsewhere, watch out for superfluous teleological principles!—such as
the drive for preservation (which we owe to Spinoza’s inconsistency).’29
According to Viljanen, the currently available non-teleological readings of conatus
can be grouped as inertial. Following his survey, these inertial readings broadly state
that conatus refers to a metaphysical inertia by which is meant ‘… a tendency in things
to remain as they are.’30 Viljanen illustrates this with an asteroid hurling through space
which, on the account of its conatus, continues to do so if not impeded by an outside
force. This choice of an asteroid is not coincidental. It is often said that what makes
Spinoza susceptible to the reintroduction of teleology is that his topic is precisely not
mere matter in motion as in physics. Given his anthropological enterprise—the liber-
ation of man—he is interested in the conatus in reference to the human spirit and body
(appetitus) and in as much as it is accompanied with a consciousness of itself
(cupiditas).31 Such concepts—appetite, desire—are obviously steeped in motivational
apprehensions. However, Spinoza carefully discards such apprehensions when he
immediately states that we do not desire what we desire because we find it good.
Rather, we find something good because we desire it.32 On that account, Viljanen
comments that ‘… exactly as little teleology is involved in any self-preservatory
activity as in the case of the asteroid.’33
However, the problem of teleology runs deeper. To get rid of teleology is not
difficult simply because Spinoza adopts a psychological terminology. The difficulty
is that the inversion and reduction of teleology, on which the inertial reading of conatus
relies, does not suffice. This reading may inverse teleology and assure us that there is in
the conatus no actualization of ‘what is not yet’ but only the preservation of ‘what
already is.’ It may reduce teleology and assure us that there is in the conatus as little
causality exerted by any motivational consciousness as in an asteroid hurling through
space. Nevertheless, even an inversed and reduced teleology remains a teleology. The
formal structure is kept perfectly intact. The real problem is that the inertial reading
affirms the underlying schema of opposition between merely maintaining what already
is (inertia) and actualizing what is not yet (teleology). What is needed in order to render
teleology inoperative is not an opposing notion like inertia—this only reinforces the
schema—but, to speak with Heidegger, a more originary one.34
Bearing this in mind, I can follow suit when Viljanen—in the face of the inertial
reading—states that ‘… I will argue […] that there is another kind of non-teleological
position available’.35 For my own part, I would suggest a reading that situates itself in
the current debate as neither teleological nor inertial but rather as existential. This
implies that the inversion of teleology must be taken to a point where it is no longer

29
Nietzsche (2002, p. 15).
30
Viljanen (2011, p. 107).
31
Cf. Spinoza (2006, IIIPIX, Scholium).
32
Cf. Spinoza (2006, IIIPIX, Scholium).
33
Viljanen (2011, p. 106). Cf. also Blumenberg (1976, p. 186).
34
On inoperativity—which of course translates the much-discussed French term désoeuvrement—cf. for
instance Agamben (2015, p. 247).
35
Viljanen (2011, p. 125).
 K. Lysemose

merely an inversion but becomes a subversion. It is along those lines that I read the
following question, suggestively posed by Manfred Sommer: ‘However, is it not
possible also to view this inversion of teleology as tending towards that existential-
analytically disclosable being which is concerned in its being about that being?’36
Following the drift of this question, the claim would be that being-there (Dasein) takes
place before the distinction between merely maintaining what already is and actualizing
what is not yet—or between mere being and well-being in Aristotelian terms. An
existential reading of conatus would have to transpose it to this dimension of originary
ethics. Only in this way will it become clear that Spinoza does in fact not smuggle
teleology in through the backdoor.37

36
Sommer (1976, p. 350—my translation). The phrase Binversion of teleology^ was coined by Robert
Spaemann for whom the modern paradigm of self-preservation was informed not primarily by the reception
of the stoic notion of oikeiôsis, but more so by an opposition to Aristotelian teleology.
37
A convincing account of the specific kind of teleology targeted by Spinoza’s critique of final causes is
offered by Sangiacomo (2016). As this absolves Spinoza from a commitment to a general rejection of
teleology, a de facto use of teleological explanations need not entail any inconsistency on Spinoza’s part.
According to Sangiacomo, the teleology Spinoza rejects is endorsed in a late medieval trajectory from Suárez
which Spinoza found embodied in Adrian Heereboord, a contemporary Dutch philosopher. What, in short,
characterizes Heereboord’s concept of teleology is that final causes operate as external principles and that these
final causes are the object of some kind of intentionality (e.g. thought, will or desire). Furthermore, his
teleology is inscribed into a general anthropocentrism according to which God, in a similar teleological sense,
creates the world for the best of human beings. Despite Heereboord’s call for a return to Aristotle, Sangiacomo
points out that the teleology in question takes τέχνη rather than φύσις as its paradigm and thus runs counter to
Aristotle’s natural teleology. This raises the question about what kind of teleology Aristotle actually did
endorse. The surprise of Sangiacomo’s account is that Aristotle—allegedly the father of teleology—and
Spinoza—allegedly the most vehement opponent of teleology—suddenly may become allies in a shared
non-anthropocentric world-view. In the particular context of the present paper, the question is to what extent
the conatus doctrine may be interpreted with a genuinely Aristotelian kind of teleology. This enormous issue
cannot be settled here. The two main points, however, that should be addressed is that in this kind of teleology,
the principle of movement is in the moving thing itself and that this does not necessarily entail any kind of
intentionality. Following Garrets discussion of so called Bunthoughtful teleology^ in Aristotle, Sangiacomo
emphasizes especially the second point (cf. Garrett (1999, p. 325–327)). That teleology can be Bunthoughtful^
goes well together with conatus, which evidently does not need to include intentionality. It is true that Spinoza
is more interested in the cases where it in fact does (cf. Spinoza 2006 (IIIPIX, Scholium)). However, as
Sangiacomo argues, even in these cases, it is not on the strength of this intentionality that there is also
teleology of the Aristotelian kind. What is important is rather that things which is brought about—intentionally
or not—‘actualize a certain form’ (cf. Sangiacomo (2016, p. 403)). And this leads us to the first and more
decisive point. What does it mean that the principle of movement is in the thing itself? In order to articulate
this, Aristotle found it necessary to coin a neologism: ἐντελέχεια. The τέλος, then, is in the thing—but in
what sense of being is it there? Here, it seems, that Aristotle deploys his distinction between potentiality and
actuality. Accordingly, a teleological explanation will always explain that something which is not yet actual
becomes actual. A pivotal point in the existential reading of conatus proposed here, however, is that this
conception of teleology is applicable to conatus only in a derivative way. Essentially, conatus designates a
mode’s perseverance in its being such that this being is not yet actualized but is also no longer a mere
potentiality. This perseverance in its being—as distinguished from an only derivative preservation of its
existence (cf. Casarino (2018, p. 66))—takes place at the very threshold between potentiality and actuality. It is
dubious—but not to be excluded—that we can detect something like that in Aristotle. However, even if we
can, it is still more dubious if we should call it teleology. Perhaps, it is better to speak of perfection, provided
that we manage to think of it without teleology (cf. for a similar approach Carriero (2011)). One way to do this
is the following: When a mode perseveres in its being at the threshold between potentiality and actuality, it
does everything it can and nothing is missing. All its powers are perfectly active although they actualize
nothing. They remain in a state of virtuality in which the mode is wholly virtuous but where it will no longer
makes sense to ask whether this actualizes something (teleology) or merely maintains something that is
already actual (inertia).
The Force of Existence. Looking for Spinoza in Heidegger

In the non-teleological reading of conatus proposed by Viljanen, the point of

departure is the concept of essence; and the geometry of power he describes at that
level certainly presents Spinoza as a thinker of force. An existential reading of conatus
might therefore share his point of departure, even if Viljanen, from that point on,
pursues a different avenue. That conatus is rooted in a certain form of essentialism is in
fact clear. The very definition states that the conatus of a thing is nothing but its actual
essence (actualem essentiam).38But what kind of essentialism does this imply? Here it
is important to bear in mind that Spinoza identifies essence and power on a level of
principle. The power of God is his essence.39 This principle holds true also for modes
since they are precisely modes of God. By implication, Spinoza abandons any concep-
tion of essence in terms of genera and species. Essentially, a thing is not defined by
‘what it is’ but rather by ‘that of which it is capable.’40 Does this essentialism allow us
to arrive at the dimension of existential analytics? Let us look briefly at the double
characterization by which Heidegger, at the very outset of his enterprise, delineates this
dimension: (a) The ‘essence’ of Dasein lies in its existence and (b) this existence of
Dasein is always its own (je mein).41
If Heidegger puts essence in square quotes, it is because he—just as Spinoza—
abandons the usual distinction between existence and essence. Existence is not that a
thing is. Essence is not what it is. In fact, existence is not on the order of that which is
present at hand (vorhanden) at all. Rather, it is a having-to-be (Zu-sein). That the
essence of Dasein lies in existence therefore means that essence is something like a
demand of being.42 In this regard, the ‘there’ (Da) of Dasein can be described as the
‘metaphysical hot spot’ addressed by this demand. Being this ‘there’ is what is meant
by existence. And to exist in this specific sense is the essence of Dasein.
When Heidegger goes on to specify this existence as always mine (je mein), he adds
something quite important in order to clear a misunderstanding away that might
otherwise inhibit the encounter of his thinking with that of Spinoza’s.43 When Spinoza
speaks of essence, it is never an abstract generality. It is always a force of existence that
singularizes a mode. It is true that reading the existential analytic in Being and Time
sometimes gives rise to the impression that it lays out universal—perhaps even
transcendental—structures, abstracted from any actual accomplishment (Vollzug) of
being-there. However, all these structures—i.e., the existentials—are not only always
co-accomplished in being-there. They are also always accomplished as je mein.
Assuming that Dasein is the way of being pertaining to human beings, existential
analytic therefore never gives a universal answer to the question ‘what is the human
being?’ Rather, it puts the questioner in question as a human being. Posing this question
therefore calls forth a responsiveness of the questioner to his or her own being. As
Heidegger writes:

38
Cf. Spinoza (2006, IIIPVII).
39
Cf. Spinoza (2006, IPXXXIV).
40
Cf. Deleuze (1988, p. 27), Lærke (2011 p. 455), and Hübner (2017).
41
Cf. Heidegger (1996, p. 40).
42
That also conatus should be interpreted as a demand is an ingenious suggestion from Agamben that I shall
consider at the end of this paper. As it will turn out, this suggestion may prove helpful in order to situate
conatus beyond teleology or non-teleology and carve out its meaning in terms of an existential interpretation.
43
I am indebted to the anonymous reviewer who pointed this out.
 K. Lysemose

This question—what man is—does not allow the individual human being, nor
especially the questioner, to sink back into a pacified state of indifference as just
any particular case of the universal essence of man in general. Quite the reverse,
this universal essence of man only becomes essential as such when the individual
comprehends him- or herself in his or her Dasein. The question concerning what
man is, if genuinely put, explicitly delivers [überantwortet] the human being over
into his or her Dasein.44

From this, it should be clear that Heidegger’s notion of essence designates a singularity
just as much as Spinoza’s. We can then go on and supplement two further points from
Heidegger’s discussion. Heidegger not only claims that the ‘there,’ which Dasein has to
be, is always its own (je mein). He adds (a) that this ‘there’ is always its own in a certain
way (Weise) and (b) that it is accomplished in this certain way according to an always
already decided possibility (Möglichkeit) of being.45 In words closer to Spinoza, this
means that Dasein always accomplishes its ‘there’ as a certain mode of being according
to a certain power of being. It is precisely with regard to the nature of this power that
Spinoza can be brought to intervene in Heidegger’s existential analytic. Heidegger
clearly thinks of it in terms of potentiality (Vermögen). In order to sense how Spinoza
thinks of it, some clues from Deleuze may prove helpful.
Deleuze offers an interpretation of Spinoza’s essentialism in which, also for him, the
conatus is rooted.46 This interpretation relies heavily on the distinction between
duration and eternity. Important here is the definition of conatus not only as essence
but as actual essence. For Deleuze, this specification implies that conatus designates
the essence of a mode in as much as it enters duration or—which is the same—in as
much as it has begun to actually exist. ‘A conatus is indeed a mode’s essence (or degree
of power [puissance]) once the mode has begun to exist.’47 Passing into existence is not
caused by the essence of the mode. Once having attained actual and durative existence,

44
Heidegger (1995a, p. 281).
45
Cf. Heidegger (1996, p. 40).
46
Apart from this commonality, though, Deleuze’s and Viljanen’s interpretations obviously springs both from
different trajectories and from different overall interpretations of Spinoza. This makes any straight forward
comparison difficult. An important similarity seems to be that Spinoza, for both Deleuze and Viljanen, arrives
at his notion of power as essence causation by undoing the Aristotelian distinction between potentiality and
actuality (cf. Viljanen (2011, p. 179); Deleuze (1992, p. 93)). Essence causation is the power of a mode to
determine its own affections (cf. Viljanen (2011, p. 126); Deleuze (1992, p. 305)). However, whereas Viljanen
conceives of this determination in analogy with geometry (thus the subtitle: ‘Spinoza’s geometry of power’),
Deleuze writes: ‘The essences are neither logical possibilities nor geometric structures; they are parts of power,
that is, degrees of physical intensity’ (Deleuze (1988, p. 65), cf. also Deleuze (1992, p. 192)). Lærke and
Sangiacomo—who also presents Spinoza in terms of an ontology of power—seems closer to Deleuze here
when they make some noteworthy reservations towards Viljanen’s account. Sangiacomo observes that this
account creates a tension between ‘perfect essence actualization’ (Viljanen) and external causation (2015, p.
539). This tension might in turn be explained by the reservation Lærke makes when he points out that the kind
of causality involved in immanent causation (and, by implication, in ‘perfect essence realization’) is not, as
Viljanen argues, the formal causality developed in late medieval philosophy, for instance by Suárez, but rather
a kind of efficient causality. The gist of this reservation is that formal causality will end up reintroducing an
ontology of potentiality and possibility that is foreign to Spinoza (cf. Lærke (2011, p. 455). A suitable place to
pursue this discussion further would be Spinoza’s notion of non-existent modes. Here, it will be necessary to
develop a conceptual apparatus that allows us to say that such modes are not merely potential or possible,
although they are not actual (cf. Deleuze (1992, p. 212)).
47
Deleuze (1992, p. 230).
The Force of Existence. Looking for Spinoza in Heidegger

though, the manner of its power is explained by way of the external relations of
composition and decomposition in which a mode enters as it encounters other modes.
Decomposition, in particular, may even be taken to the point of annihilation. But this in
no way impedes the essence of the mode. ‘Lacking nothing while the mode does not
yet exist, the essence is deprived of nothing when it ceases to exist.’48 This suggests the
possibility of conceiving of a mode under the aspect of eternity rather than duration.
Here, according to Deleuze, the manner of a mode’s power is explained as auto-
affective essence causation. Every mode is itself the cause of the way it modifies and
thus expresses its own power.49 Rather than being externally linked, modes in this
regard form a system of intensities where each mode is wholly expressive and in
necessary agreement with every other mode.50
We do not need to enter any further into the details of Deleuze’s ingenious
interpretation here. As of now, the point to single out is that Deleuze situates the
essence of a mode at the threshold between duration and eternity. This animates us to
broaden his interpretation of the definition of the conatus and distinguish between
conatus as the essence of a mode as it exists actually and conatus as the essence of a
mode as it exists—let us say then—virtually.51 In other words, we can distinguish
between existence itself, which is actual, and the force of that existence, which is not
actual but virtual (and, as such, very much active). In doing so, we may bear in mind
Spinoza’s own distinction between the abstract conception of existence as a quantified
duration of a mode and the nature of existence as the being-in-God of a mode. As he
writes:

Here by existence I do not mean duration, that is, existence insofar as it is

considered in the abstract as a kind of quantity. […] For although each particular
thing is determined by another particular thing to exist in a certain manner, the
force [vis] by which each perseveres in existence [in existendo perseverat]
follows from the eternal necessity of God’s nature.52

48
Deleuze (1992, p. 249). Cf. Spinoza (2006, IV, Praefatio). This is also a point to bear in mind in order not to
confuse conatus with any kind of survival instinct (cf. Yoval (1999), Montag (2016, p. 170), and Casarino
2018 (pp. 64–66)).
49
This does not mean that modes are the origin of the power they thus modify. On the intricate relation
between God’s power and the power of finite modes, cf. Sangiacomo’s model of production (2018)—but also
already Deleuze’s model of expression (Deleuze (1992, p. 91–92)).
50
Cf. Deleuze (1992, p. 303, 315 and 398).
51
Agamben remarks that: ‘The oxymoron Bactual essence^ shows the inadequacy of the categories of
traditional ontology with respect to what is to be thought here’ (Agamben (2016, p. 171)). What is to be
thought—again—is an essence that is not actual but not, therefore, merely potential or possible. When Spinoza
chooses to define conatus as actual essence, we might therefore follow the drift of his thinking if we propose
to distinguish between the actuality of a mode (its existence in duration) and its essential activity (its
virtuousness in eternity). Conatus as actual essence can then be viewed from both perspectives, i.e., known
with two distinct kinds of knowledge (namely of the second and third kind).
52
Spinoza (2006, IIPXLV, Scholium). Interpretations emphasizing that conatus is most fundamentally a desire
for eternity—and not, or only derivatively, a desire to maintain durative existence—are probably best suited to
enter the existential reading of conatus proposed in the paper at hand (cf. for instance Yoval (1999), Youpa
(2009) and, especially, Vatter (2010) and Casarino (2018)).
 K. Lysemose

In accordance with this distinction, the in suo esse perseverare can be considered (a) as
the preservation of the actual existence of a mode in duration and (b) as the preservation
of the virtual force of existence of a mode—not exactly in eternity, perhaps, but rather
in proximity to eternity.53 It is the latter case which will be the important one for the
existential interpretation of conatus proposed in the present paper. At stake here is a
mode’s affirmation of itself in its essence on the threshold just ‘before’ a potential is
actualized in duration. As we shall see, the movement of the conative drive crosses and
opens this passage from potentiality to actuality but does not itself travel it.
If we were to reconsider Being and Time from this perspective, it is undoubtedly the
notion of potentiality-of-being (Seinkönnen) that most obviously offers it up for a
Spinozian intervention. What kind of Können is Seinkönnen? Is it indeed—as the
English translation suggests—a potentiality such that an Aristotelian interpretation
almost imposes itself? If the conceptual apparatus of Aristotle indeed informs
Heidegger’s thinking, this translation may very well be congenial. The action of
being-there would then in some sense be the actualization of a potentiality. The
hypothesis I would like to propose, however, is that a systematic reconstruction of
certain passages in three important lecture courses following the publication of Being
and Time will allow for a deconstruction of this Aristotelian framework. This, in turn,
might help facilitate a recasting of the notion of potentiality-of-being in light of which
its Spinozian nature could be excavated more unambiguously than we find it in Being
and Time.

Potentiality and Actuality

The first text I would like to draw attention to is Heidegger’s 1931 lecture on the first
three chapters of Book Θ of Aristotle’s Metaphysics.54 This lecture course is announced
as an investigation into the essence (Wesen) and actuality (Wirklichkeit) of force (Kraft).
We cannot enter the full scope of Heidegger’s meticulous analysis here. For our
purpose, the decisive development of the argument takes place in the interpretation
of the third chapter. Here the general theme of Book Θ—the relation between δύναμις
and ἐνέργεια—becomes explicit. The question is how the being-at-work (ἐνέργεια,
lat. actus) of a being-able (δύναμις, lat. potentia) takes place.55 Does actuality belong
to potentiality itself? And if so, is it then possible to have a potentiality without

53
According to Voss’ informative discussion, the virtual cannot be conflated with the eternal even though ‘…
the conceptual couple essence/existence comes close to the Deleuzian couple of virtual/actual.’ (Voss (2017, p.
171)). I shall return to the question why and in what sense I say ‘proximity to eternity.’
54
It is obvious that Agamben’s famous and fruitful development of the Aristotelian notion of potentiality—at
the core of Agamben’s thinking—owes a great deal to Heidegger’s interpretations of Aristotle in general, and
perhaps to this lecture in particular (for Agamben on potentiality cf., e.g., 2017 (pp. 33–56)). This is not the
place to engage with Agamben, though, even if he has certainly animated the presentation given here of
potentiality and actuality. Highly recommendable readings of the lecture in question is offered by Brogan
(2005, pp. 110–137)) and Bernet (2017). Connors’ account of ‘force’ in modern thinking from Nietzsche to
Derrida also has a valuable chapter on Heidegger (cf. Connors (2010)).
55
As for terminology, I shall stick to potentiality and actuality. The reader should keep the Greek terms and
their literal translation as ‘being-at-work’ and ‘being-able’ in mind. I reserve the term capability for the cases
where it is undecided if the force involved should be understood as a potentiality in the Aristotelian sense or
otherwise.
The Force of Existence. Looking for Spinoza in Heidegger

exercising it? Where can we locate and how should we conceive of the transition
(Übergang) from or transference (Überführung) of potentiality to actuality? These are
the questions Heidegger addresses.
In general, and as any textbook will inform us, Aristotle describes movement
(κίνησις) as a movement from potentiality to actuality. This conception is valid for
the Physics and also—although in a more complicated way—for the Ethics. Moreover,
if a potentiality is being-well-at-work, it can be said to be virtuous. At the outset then,
virtue (ἀρετή) is an ontological category pertaining to everything that is what it is well.
The complication of the Ethics emerges due to the specificity of the human being as
a being that can practice. Here, we must initially distinguish between the execution and
the acquisition of a potentiality. It is one thing to execute a potentiality you already
possess and another to acquire a new one. Let us recapitulate what Aristotle says on this
score.56
Human beings are able to acquire ethical virtues through habituation (ἔθος). No
natural being can do so. Aristotle illustrates this with the futility of training a stone to
levitate or fire to gravitate. Stone and fire execute their natural movements with a
certain perfection: they do not hesitate in the least. They are even in the grip of these
movements. This does not imply that acquired virtues are then unnatural or imperfect.
Aristotle states—in a remarkable phrase—that they are acquired neither from nor
against nature but that nature has made us receptive (δέξασθαι) to new virtues that
can be perfected (τελειόω) in habit. Granted, some potentialities are born in us
(ἐγγίγνομαι) from nature. In these cases, we have the potentiality first and then
actualize it. This is how it is with the senses. We have the potentiality of sight which
we actualize in seeing. The ethical virtues, however, is acquired by actualizing them—
and Aristotle, in order to explain this, notably adds that this occurs just like in the arts.57
Apparently, the movement from potentiality to actuality is reversed here. To under-
stand it accurately, though, we must consider what it can mean to actualize when we do
not already have the corresponding potentiality. What is being actualized then? Is it
perhaps the receptibility for new potentialities? And if so, is this receptibility itself a
potentiality like others, or does it have a privileged status? Let us proceed with two
questions: first a preliminary question about how we acquire potentialities in general;
then—with that in mind—a question specifically about how the receptibility for
potentialities is constituted.
To acquire new potentialities entails the ability to practice. Practice, however,
involves a paradox. Briefly stated, to practice means to do what you cannot do. It
means to actualize a potentiality you do not have. It is important not to dissolve this
paradox since we would then lose the intricacy of Aristotle’s analysis. Human beings
can in fact do what they cannot do. And it is necessary to emphasize this paradox even
more in order to bring out its paradoxical meaning: they can do what they can do only
because they cannot do it. For instance, if I can play the guitar, I must also be able to
not play the guitar—not just in the trivial sense that I can take a break from playing, but
in the radical sense that I must be unable to play while playing. Otherwise, I cannot
practice. And this is equally so whether I am a beginner or an advanced guitar player. In
fact, no one starts from scratch without any potentiality whatsoever, and no one exhaust

56
Cf. Aristotle (1984, p. 1103a ff.).
57
Aristotle (1984, p. 1103a).
 K. Lysemose

any potentiality wholly. The important thing to observe, however, is that no matter
where I am ranked, the situation remains the same. In practice, there are always two
simultaneous movements: there is, on the one hand, the actualization of some acquired
potentiality; and there is, on the other hand, a countermovement that co-actualizes this
very potentiality as a potentiality one does not have.
It is paramount to insist that these two movements go together. In practice, an
already acquired potential does not function simply as a secure basis on top of which
acquisition of further potentiality takes place. This, again, would dissolve the paradox.
Rather, in the actualization of a potentiality, this very potentiality is simultaneously at
stake as a potentiality I do not have—at least to the extent that I can be said to practice
it. This is why a virtuous guitar player can practice a simple C-major scale. In fact, this
is a marvelous accomplishment that merits some thought. It reveals that practice not
only means to do what you cannot do. It equally—and no less paradoxically—means to
be unable to do what you can do. In a way, this should of course not be possible. How
can you genuinely practice something you are already capable of? The great artist,
however, is not just someone who can do something extraordinarily difficult. He is
someone who can play with what he can already do as if he cannot do it. And this ‘as if’
in no way implies that he plays it safe, as it were. It means—to stick with the
example—that when the virtuous guitar player plays the C-major scale for the ump-
teenth time, he is still able to do it without safety: truly as if it were the first time. In
other words, the virtuosity of an artist consists in the ability to exhibit, in the midst of
his impressively developed ability, the unfathomable depth of his inability (ἀδυναμια)
and thus truly begin again.58
There belongs therefore to any practicable potentiality a ‘not having’ of this very
potentiality. Having it (ἔχον) therefore implies being deprived of it—but in a way that a
being which does not have this potentiality cannot be deprived of it since the trick of
practicing is, in a certain sense, to be able to put the privation (στέρησις) to work. It is
important to notice the unsettling implications of this. Experientially, the situation of
practice is always the following: I am called into being-X but not told exactly what it
means to be X.59 As Aristotle famously points out, there is an inexactitude in all ethical
knowledge (φρόνησις). This is not a flaw. Ethical knowledge is not a lesser degree of
the same kind of knowledge we call know-how (τέχνη). Accordingly, the analogy with
the arts that Aristotle proposes pertains to the practice of being an artist—which is itself
an ethical praxis (πρᾶξις)—and not to the technical production of works (ποίησις). As
a somewhat experienced carpenter, I may very well be able to produce chairs and
tables. In this respect, I can rely on my know-how. Hence, the production of a chair
may be in perfect accord with a manual and the chair may as such be perfect:
functioning precisely as it should. The practice of being a carpenter, however, is in
the grip of a responsibility that will never let me be a virtuous carpenter outside of
practicing it. And this implies ineradicably not-knowing exactly what a virtuous

58
When developing this point, Agamben refers to Kafka’s fragment on ‘The Great Swimmer’ who holds the
world record but must admit that he does not know how to swim (cf. Agamben (2017, p. 46)). Perhaps, the
secret of the Socratic docta ignorantia also lies here?
59
The paradoxical structure of an ‘X without X’ is explored in Derrida’s erudition of the exclamation
attributed to Aristotle ‘Oh my friends, there are no friends’ in Politics of Friendship, as well as in Jonathan
Lear’s discussion of Socratic-Kierkegaardian irony in the form of the question ‘Among all X, is there an X?’ in
The Case of Irony.
The Force of Existence. Looking for Spinoza in Heidegger

carpenter is. This is something I must find out along the way, as I go ahead producing
chairs and tables and so forth. Hence, to practice means letting a not-having loose in a
potentiality so that it subjects this practice to an excessive demand. We can state this as
the demand to remain in—or to anticipate Spinoza at this point: to persevere in—
responsibility. This leads us to the second question.
In order to be able to practice, I must be able to respond to a ‘not having’ that calls
from inside of my potentialities. Only so can I practice them. The ability to respond in
this sense, therefore, is a potentiality presupposed in all practicable potentialities.60 But
how is this potentiality itself acquired? How is it practiced? And how does it become
virtuous? Indeed, are these Aristotelian terms—potentiality, practice, virtue—still the
right ones? These are the questions that will eventually lead us into Spinozian territory.
Aristotle’s answer is that we are receptive to new virtues from nature. The word he
uses is the verb δέχομαι which, from its Proto-Indo-European root, has to do with
taking, accepting and receiving. Interestingly, it is a verb in the middle voice, i.e., the
voice that is neither active nor passive. In the active voice, I have something in my
power. In the passive voice, I am subjected to an alien power. But what happens to
power in the middle voice? The middle voice indicates that the distinction between
active and passive is rendered indistinct. In the practice of such a power, I will therefore
‘act upon’ just as much as I will ‘be acted upon.’61
With this in mind, we may ask if there is in receptibility this intertwinement of
activity and passivity indicated by the middle voice?62 Exercising this potentiality, then,
would not be the activity of the putting-to-work of a potentiality. Nor would it be the
passivity of a mere potentiality currently not at-work. We arrive, consequently, at a
point where also potentiality and actuality become indistinct. And this is precisely the
point Heidegger also reaches at the pinnacle of his analysis.63
Heidegger asks of us to imagine a runner in the starting blocks. What happens here
to his potentiality of running? A runner is someone who is capable of running. But
obviously, he had this potentiality in a different way when he was fast asleep last night
than now when he is in the starting blocks. It is already no longer merely potential. Still,
his potentiality of running is also not yet at work in as much as he is not running. If
movement is a passage of force from a state of potentiality to a state of actuality, what is
the state of force that the runner here depicts for us?
As Heidegger observes, there is a difference between an old lady kneeling at a
crossroad and the way the runner is kneeling in the starting blocks. Neither moves. The
standstill of the runner, however, is so that his being-able to run (im Stande zu laufen)
stands wholly ready. The words Heidegger catches hold of in the attempt to describe
force at this exact point are important to notice. He describes the potentiality of running
as being driven by itself towards its exercise (selbst-drängen), and he describes the
runner as looking tensely ahead (gespannt nach vorn) and thus—gedrängt, gespannt—
as expanding himself in his readiness (im Bereitschaft ausbreiten). The runner is
awaiting only to be disinhibited (Enthemmung) by the signal: run!

60
I will return to the notion of responsibility at the end of this paper.
61
On the use of the middle voice in Spinoza, cf. Agamben (1999, pp. 234–235). For some critical remarks on
Agamben here, cf. Vardoulakis (2010).
62
This would correspond with the Spinozian idea that conatus is always wholly exercised in its capability of
affecting as well as being affected. I shall return briefly to this.
63
Cf. Heidegger (1995b, pp. 187–188).
 K. Lysemose

Of course, we must remember that the runner is only a heuristic depiction. The
important thing is that it may help us seize force at a point where we can access the
dimension in which we aim to describe it. After all, we are not interested in the action
of running but of being-there. The suggestion, then, is that being-there is an action
accomplished in a manner similar to the way the runner accomplishes being-in-the-
starting-blocks. In being-there, we do as the runner—although not, like the runner, at a
certain highlighted point in time, but rather inconspicuously throughout our entire
being; and whereas the runner will eventually run and thus actualize his potentiality
for running, being-there remains, so to speak, in the starting blocks.
It is here that we can begin to engage with Spinoza. The hypothesis in that respect
will be the following: what Spinoza calls force of existence—and develops in his
doctrine of the conatus—is located right at the indistinction between potentiality and
actuality. If this hypothesis perhaps seems a bit bold, we must welcome encouragement
before we pursue it. In an important essay Riceour provides us with it.
Ricoeur addresses ‘… a ground starting from which the self can be said to be acting
…’ and describes it as ‘… a ground of being, at once potentiality and actuality …’. He
admits that Heidegger, in his interpretation of Aristotle, detects something like this as
he ‘… reconstructs something implicit but unstated that Aristotle’s text is held to cover
over.’ However, the outcome of this reconstruction, which Ricoeur ultimately finds
disappointing, leads Ricoeur to look elsewhere for the connection between the self and
this ground which it stands out from—and he then exclaims: ‘For me, this connection is
Spinoza’s conatus’. Pointing so decisively to Spinoza, Ricouer nevertheless lines up
behind the many prominent thinkers that never develop their conjectures about him.
Instead he passes the torch: ‘Welcome indeed the thinker who would be able to carry
the BSpinozist^ reappropriation of Aristotelian energeia to a level comparable to that
now held by the BHeideggerian^ reappropriations of Aristotelian ontology.’64
Without of course aspiring to this position, I allow myself to take encouragement
from these remarks by Ricoeur. As we shall see, it did in fact not escape Heidegger
himself that it was necessary to investigate a force hidden somewhere in the distinction
between potentiality and actuality, nor that it had to do with the concept of conatus.
This leads me to the second text.

Drive and Conatus

In 1928, at the end of his time in Marburg, Heidegger held a lecture course on The
Metaphysical Foundations of Logic.65 Here, Heidegger opposes the scholastic notion
of potentia activa with Leibniz’ notion of vis activa. He quotes Leibniz:

But the active force [vis activa] contains a certain act [enthält ein gewisses schon
wirkliches Wirken] bzw. ἐντελέχεια and is thus midway between the faculty of

64
Ricoeur (1992, pp. 308–317).
65
For informative accounts of this Heidegger lecture, cf. Neumann (2014), Lodge (2015), and Delgado and
Escribano (2016).
The Force of Existence. Looking for Spinoza in Heidegger

acting [bloßer ruhender Wirkfähigkeit, facultatem agendi] and the act itself [dem
Wirken selbst, actionemque ipsam] and involves a conatus [ein Versuchen].66

It is obvious that when Leibniz situates his vis activa between the faculty of acting and
the action itself, it corresponds well with Heidegger’s runner in the starting blocks.
Leibniz has two terms available to describe the force involved in this in-between: the
familiar Aristotelian term entelechy (ἐντελέχειαν) and a notion in vogue at the time:
conatus.
Heidegger points out that Leibniz’ ‘… construal of ἐντελέχεια does not conform to
Aristotle’s real intention’67 What Leibniz wishes to have understood with this term is,
as he himself explains, a certain perfection of the monad. But what about conatus then?
The word conari means to try, to endeavor and to strive—and Heidegger thus imme-
diately adds Versuchen in the quote. This literal meaning is ambiguous though. If it
signifies an attempt separated from its success—perhaps even a vain attempt—it misses
precisely the perfection in question. The vis activa is not a dormant capability
(ruhender Wirkfähigkeit) but already a certain actual work (wirkliche Wirken) and is
as such perfectly executed—although it is not the being-at-work (Wirken) itself. To
capture conatus at this precise point, Heidegger suggests translating vis activa with
tendency (Tendieren) or—even better according to himself—with drive (Drängen).
Heidegger explains his terminology:

Drive [Drang] is neither a disposition nor a release, rather a Btaking it on^ [das
Sich-angelegen-sein-lassen], namely, a Btaking it upon oneself.^ What is meant is
a setting-itself-upon [das Sich-auf-sich-selbst-anlegen], as in the idiom Bhe is set
on it^ [er legt es darauf an], a taking-it-on-oneself [das Sich-selbst-anliegen].
What characterizes drive is that it by itself leads itself into activity [von sich aus
ins Wirken sich überleitet], not just occasionally but essentially.68

Again, we are clearly at a point between potentiality and actuality—here expressed

respectively as disposition (Anlage) and release (Ablauf). To understand the drive
situated here, Heidegger narrows it in from both sides.
From the side of the Anlage, the drive is an Anliegen. To have an Anliegen means to
have an issue at stake. At some point, this will perhaps become a wholly fledged
agenda or project to be carried out more or less successfully. Before this, however, it
already makes itself noticeable as a concern that has not found its object yet: something
is coming up, something geht mir an. Accordingly, the drive Heidegger excavates is not
the drive towards the thing coming up—whatever it will turn out to be. It is not a drive
towards something lacking. Rather, it is a drive towards the self as driven towards
something. The drive is thus its own Anliegen. And it is in this sense self-driven. It is, as
Heidegger writes ‘… self-propulsive [von ihm selbst an-getrieben].’69 To risk an

66
Heidegger (1984, p. 82). The quote is from Leibniz’ De prima philosophiae emendatione et de notione
substantiae. I have added both some of Leibniz’ Latin phrases as well as Heidegger’s own translation into
German in square brackets.
67
Heidegger (1984, p. 84).
68
Heidegger (1984, p. 82)—translation modified.
69
Heidegger (1984, p. 82).
 K. Lysemose

illustration—only to aid our thinking—we can say that the drive is somewhat like a
spinner, which, when it is sent off, spurs itself on and spins on its own. In any case, it
seems quite obvious that Heidegger in the quote is trying to re-configure the Sorge-
structure of Dasein in terms of drive. Seiendes, dem es in seinem Sein um dieses selbst
geht would then be: Drang, dem es in seinem Drängen um dieses selbst dreht.
From the side of the Ablauf, the drive is a von-sich-aus-ins-Wirken-sich-überleiten.
The drive, in other words, propels itself towards a release in being-at-work. But it is not
itself released in being-at-work. Rather, it drives a potentiality right to the point of its
actualization without itself following it into this actualization. The drive sends some-
thing off but remains itself in place. This does not mean that the drive stops at this
point. Its own work—its wirkliche Wirken—is not over because what is at issue for the
drive is the drive itself, not the actualization of a potentiality. The drive is not a drive
towards something to become actual, for something to take place, for something to
happen etc. It does not lack something and has no fulfillment in something. The drive is
full of itself. We can therefore look at the drive from two different aspects. Seen ‘from
within,’ the drive drives incessantly. It is wholly active and full of its own activity. Seen
‘from without,’ it stands still. Nothing is actualized. To risk again an illustration, it is
somewhat like the relation between a vehicle and its wheels (or its spinners, if one
could imagine that). The wheels spin around in their own circles and, as such (seen
‘from within’), they go nowhere. But by doing this, they enable the vehicle to actually
move.
A drive is thus an enabler. It enables a transition (Überleitung) from potentiality to
actuality. The drive itself, however, remains tense in the transition. This is perhaps why,
for Heidegger, the word ‘tendency’ also comes into play. The drive is wholly extended
towards actualization but loses absolutely no tension when actualization occurs. Why,
then, is the drive tense? It is not because it lacks in the tendency towards actualization.
The drive is nothing but this tendency and there is nothing in the drive that works
contrary to it.70 It is also not because it lacks in the force to accomplish the transition.
The drive lacks no force. That the drive is self-driven means on the contrary—and to
quote Heidegger again—that ‘… it brings along with it the essentials of its being, the
goal [wozu] and manner [wie] of its drive.’71 The drive brings with it all the force it
needs to be perfectly executed. Yet, it remains tense. Heidegger specifies:

The phenomenon of drive not only brings along with it, as it were, the cause, in
the sense of release, but drive is as such always already released. It is triggered,
however, in such a way that it is still always charged, still tensed.72

At the point of transition from potentiality to actuality, we thus find a drive, which is
always—incessantly and continually—released (ausgelöst), but nevertheless maintains
itself in tension (gespannt). The drive enables the transition but remains itself unaffect-
ed by what it enables. In this way, the drive is nothing but its own preservation. This
70
This corresponds with Spinoza for whom there is nothing in a thing contrary to it, if analyzed according to
its conative drive (cf. Spinoza (2006, IIIP4)).
71
Heidegger (1984, p. 83). We should of course treat the translation of wozu with goal with some caution
here, bearing in mind the issue of teleology.
72
Heidegger (1984, p. 82)—translation slightly modified.
The Force of Existence. Looking for Spinoza in Heidegger

self-preservation (conservatio sui) is not a drive towards the preservation of an actual

self. The drive drives ‘before’ any actualization and actuality. Rather, it is the preser-
vation of the drive itself and as such.
If this drive is tense, its tension must be found in the drive itself. The drive, as we
said, is full of itself. Yet, it is not satisfied—but nor is it unsatisfied. Rather, beyond any
question of satisfaction, the drive strives towards its own drive with a striving—a
conari—that is never separated from its perfect execution. Its tension, therefore, is one
of pure joy. The drive vibrates with joy (rather than trembles with fear). It enjoys its
own exercise with a joy wholly free from negativity since this joy neither comes from
the overcoming of something, nor from the fulfillment of a lack. Uninvolved in any
dialectics of actualization whatsoever, the drive only follows its own desire.
In his openly Spinozian meditation on The Pleasure in Drawing, Nancy repeatedly
comes back to Matisse’s saying that what a painter does is ‘… to follow the desire of
the line’.73 Perhaps the creative act thus exhibits the conative drive and may help us
understand its tension—and that is to say: its joy—better. What happens when the
painter draws a line? As soon as the drawing has begun, there is a continual actuali-
zation (ἐνέργεια) of a form in the wake of the drawing. And when the pen is lifted
from the canvas, we can already say that this form constitutes an actual work of art
(ἔργον). Matisse, however, suggests that the line has its own desire. This is not a desire
to actualize something or to become something actual. Rather, the desire of the line is to
maintain itself in the draw of its own drawing. The artist—who creates—follows this
desire. In other words, the artist is not interested in actualization or in actuality but in
the creative act itself—which is precisely not an act in the Aristotelian sense but rather
the joy of a drive that manages to preserve itself. As Derrida writes (contra structural-
ism): ‘Form fascinates when one no longer has the force to understand force from
within itself. That is, to create.’74
Perhaps ever since the first drawing on a cave wall, the artist is the one who has exhibited
what it is ‘to create.’ The drawing of a line has a different movement than that from
potentiality to actuality. It crosses this movement so that in its wake the passage from
potentiality to actuality is opened. The line is thus an incision—a rift (Riß) to evoke
Heidegger’s term in The Origin of the Work of Art. Out of this rift, the work of art springs
forth. It springs forth as when someone pours water drawn from a well-spring—something
which the German language allows us to call Schöpfen. And all creations, all Schöpfung, are
like that. Creation is an incision. And precisely such an incision takes place in the conative
drive of each being as it drives in its being; or it takes place—with Spinoza’s terms—in
every mode of substance. The conative drive drives at the point of transition from potenti-
ality to actuality. It continuously opens this passage. But, it does not itself travel it. The drive
always follows its own desire and each being has its own line to trace.
The drive is thus engaged with its own drive rather than with any actualization or
actuality. It enables that something takes place but takes place itself ‘before’ anything
takes place. In this sense, nothing—i.e., nothing actual—takes place in the drive. What,
however, does take place in the drive, according to Heidegger, is time: ‘From drive
itself arises time.’75 And if we have already established that Heidegger attempts to

73
Nancy (2013b, p. 40, 98).
74
Derrida (2005, p. 3).
75
Heidegger (1984, p. 92).
 K. Lysemose

rephrase Sorge in terms of Drang, it should come as no surprise that he also finds time
here.
From Spinoza, we know that the two aspects under which we can look at the
conative drive are ultimately the aspect of duration (subspecie durationis) and the
aspect of eternity (subspecie aeternitatis). If these are aspects, it does not mean that
there is a drive an sich behind them, though. It means that whether we look at the drive
in one way or the other, it is the same drive. The drive does not hide itself behind these
aspects. Rather, it shows that duration and eternity become the same, provided that we
understand ‘same’ in terms of the Spinozian sive. This would not imply that we cannot
or should not make the distinction. On the contrary, we must make the distinction
between duration and eternity. Otherwise we shall never understand the drive, since it is
precisely this distinction that becomes indistinct in it. To be driven towards your own
drive—or to be spinning—is not to be outside of time, in eternity. Rather, it is to lose
track of time.
We can try to illustrate this experientially. If you spin in the most literal and
corporeal sense, say, for 3 min, this duration is not measured from within the spinning.
Indeed, if you are able to count the rounds like the second hand of a watch then,
arguably, you are not truly spinning. The 3 min must be measured from without. A
being, however, that does not spin on occasion but spins in its very being cannot as
such step outside of it and measure how long it has been spinning. And it is along those
lines that we should conceive that the conative drive renders duration and eternity
indistinct. We can perhaps say that it draws out—extends and erases—this ontological
difference. I propose to call this ‘temporalization’.
The claim, then, would be that the drive temporalizes being. This
temporalization occurs neither in time nor outside of time, but rather in a time
before time (and as Derrida attests: ‘… this time before time has always made
me dizzy’).76 The drive temporalizes, on the one hand, ‘before’ the before-and-
after of whatever takes place; and it temporalizes, on the other hand, in a
‘before’ that is still not exactly eternal but rather placed in an immanent
infinity. The drive is immanent because when it drives, it remains in its own
tension; and it is infinite because there is no end to the coming of the driving
force seen from within the drive. This is why Spinoza writes that: ‘The conatus
with which each single thing endeavors to persist in its own being does not
involve finite time, but indefinite time [tempus indefinitum].’77 The conative
drive is neither eternal nor finite. Rather, it involves an indefinite duration. This
is due to the fact that the drive drives towards itself. Seen from within, this
spinning does not take time. In its vertigo, the drive knows of no beginning or
end. Rather, it gives time. The conative drive gives to being a tempo—a beat, a
rhythm, a pulse. And it is according to this tempo that there is a measure of
time for something to take. Each being is essentially a conative drive that beats
at the threshold between eternity and duration and temporalizes being according
to its own singular pulse.
As we have seen, the drive at this threshold lacks nothing to enable the transition
from potentiality to actuality—neither in tendency nor in force; and it also loses no

76
Derrida (2008, p. 17).
77
Spinoza (2006, IIIP8).
The Force of Existence. Looking for Spinoza in Heidegger

force or tendency when this transition is accomplished. As such, the drive is a point of
absolute intensity and force. This, however, does not preclude that actualization can be
inhibited or disinhibited. Immediately after having stated in the quote above that the
drive is always released in itself, although it remains tense, Heidegger continues:

Drive correspondingly can be hindered in its thrust [Drängen], but it is not in that
case the same as a merely static capability for acting [ruhenden Wirkfähigkeit].
Removing the hindrance can nevertheless allow the thrust to become free. Drive,
accordingly, needs no additional cause from outside, but, on the contrary, needs
only the removal of some existing impediment.78

There is then such a thing as inhibition and disinhibition of the drive. But, this must be
interpreted rigorously negatively. There is no causality exerted upon the force of the
drive from without. All causality of the drive is immanent. Consequently, if the drive is
inhibited, this does not diminish the force of the drive. It does not become a dormant
potentiality. And inversely, if the drive is disinhibited, this does not increase the force of
the drive. The drive does not need any occasional causality. It brings with it all the force
it needs. All in all, the drive is incessantly and continually released and drives on
regardless of its inhibition or disinhibition. Nevertheless, the fact that the drive can be
inhibited and, as such, disinhibited is not unimportant.
When a potential is actualized, something takes place. Temporalization itself,
however, does not take place. But it can become a place of being. And this is
precisely what happens when inhibition occurs at the point of transition from
potentiality to actuality. Dasein thus means being (in) a place before something
takes place or being (at) a beginning before something begins. It is a lingering
or hesitation in the beginning. As such, being-there remains in proximity to
eternity: it stays with the force of its own drive. This driving force is—as
Spinoza says of God—never a remote cause.79 Considered as conative drives or
forces of existence, everything is in God. Nothing emanates from God in a neo-
platonic system of increasing distance but, as Deleuze aptly puts it, ‘immanates’
in God in a system of immanent causation.80 Dasein, however, is a peculiar
force of existence that manages to dwell in this immanence. Dasein constitutes
a life in immanence.81
The main take-along idea from this is the following: if immanence is
otherwise an inconspicuous point of transition where potentialities continually
become actual, immanence becomes, in the case of inhibition, a place of being.
Nothing actual takes place here. What does take place, though, is being-there
with its own peculiar mode of temporalization. From the point of view of an
analytic of Dasein, inhibition thus proves to be a key notion. What is inhibi-
tion? What is disinhibition? And what is their relation to the drive they inhibit
or disinhibit? These are the questions that lead us to our third text.

78
Heidegger (1984, pp. 82–83).
79
Spinoza (2006, IPXXVIII, Scholium).
80
Cf. Deleuze (1992, p. 172).
81
On this Deleuzian term cf. Agamben (1999).
 K. Lysemose

Disinhibition and Inhibition

In 1929/30, upon his return to Freiburg, Heidegger held his famous lecture course on
The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics.82 When, in the second part, Heidegger
elaborates his three main theses—the stone is without world (weltlos), the animal is
poor in world (weltarm), the human being is world-forming (weltbildend)—he comes
across the relation between drive and disinhibition in his discussion specifically of the
middle thesis. Heidegger sets out to explain this thesis with a clarification of the
essence of the organism. He distinguishes between tool (Zeug) and organ (Organ). A
tool is a readiness (Fertigkeit) for something, whereas an organ is a capability
(Fähigkeit) of something. It is in order to explicate this capability that the notion of
drive is introduced.
The tool is ready to be put to service according to some program (Vorschrift). It is
subjected to a rule from without. The organism, on the contrary, brings its own rule
with it—and what is more: it drives itself ahead into that of which it is capable. It is this
drive-character of the capability (Triebcharacter der Fähigkeit), which is crucial in the
present context. Heidegger writes:

Something which is capable […] drives itself toward its own capability for …
This self-driving [Sichvortreiben] and being driven toward its wherefore
[Vorgetriebensein in sein Wozu] is only possible in that which is capable
inasmuch as capability is in general instinctually driven [triebhaft]. Capacity is
only to be found where there is drive [Fähigkeit ist immer nur da, wo Trieb ist].83

What we encounter here as Trieb is unmistakably that very conatus, which Heidegger
had previously translated as Drang.84 It is a tendency that propels itself into that of
which it is capable. If we bracket the actualization of the capability and look instead at
the drive itself, we will arrive at the question: what is a drive that maintains itself in its
drive towards that of which a capability is capable (triebhafte Sichvorgetriebenhalten in
das Wozu)? The answer will become clearer if we look at the distinction between
disinhibition and inhibition in its relation to drive.
Heidegger claims that the animal is surrounded with a ring of disinhibitions
(Enthemmungsring), which accounts for the captivation (Benommenheit) of the animal
in its behavior (Benehmen).85 In the animal, the drive is never inhibited. Granted, it can
be satiated. When, for instance, a bee stops sucking up honey, it is not because it
ascertains that there is too much. To do this, the bee would need to have a relation to
honey as honey, and this presupposes an inhibition of the drive, as Heidegger will go
on to show. Rather, the bee stops simply because it is satiated. In fact, if a small incision

82
For an interpretative take on this course in vein with the one presented here, cf. Franck (1991) and,
especially, Vatter (2010). Vatter argues that B… Heidegger’s approach to the conception of biological life
offers pathways that lead back to a Spinozist conception of eternal life …^ (p. 227).
83
Heidegger (1995a, p. 228).
84
I allow myself to translate both Trieb and Drang with drive. In Fundamental Concepts, Heidegger speaks
about ‘triebhafter Drang’ (which the translation, perhaps not quite appropriate, renders as ‘instinctual impulse,’
p. 233).
85
Cf. Heidegger (1995a, pp. 253–261).
The Force of Existence. Looking for Spinoza in Heidegger

is made into the abdomen, so that the honey will run out, the bee will not stop sucking.
Instead, it will itself be sucked endlessly into this specific disinhibition of the drive.
When, under normal circumstances, the bee escapes this, it is because it is satiated.
Such satiation, however, must not be confused with inhibition. What alone inhibits the
drive—and this, again, must be interpreted rigorously negatively—is if it is not
disinhibited. And this is precisely what will never happen to the bee since it is encircled
in a ring of disinhibitions. As soon as it is satiated, its drive will be disinhibited again
and thus captivated in a new behavior—for instance flying back to the hive. The bee is
truly a busy-bee.86
From the perspective of the analytic of Dasein, our attention is attracted to the case
of inhibition which Heidegger in 1929/30—never closer to philosophical anthropology
than here—daringly presents as the case of the human being. What is precisely
inhibited? Here it is crucial to distinguish carefully. The drive is a drive towards
actualization, and when the drive is inhibited, it is with respect to actualization. This,
however, does not mean that the drive as such is inhibited. In his lectures on the
Metaphysics of Aristotle, Heidegger writes that …

… the incapable [Unvermögende] is actual [wirklich] precisely because it does

not find the transition to enactment [Vollzug]. To not find the transition to …: this
is not nothing, but instead can have the pressing force [Eindringlichkeit] and
actuality of the greatest plight [höchster Bedrängnis] and so be what is properly
urgent [eigentlich Drängende].87

When actualization is inhibited, the drive as such is not. Rather, it becomes pressing. To
make it vivid, we can perhaps imagine a stream of water from an unstoppable source.
What happens if you inhibit it so that there is no other way to find and no room to rise
in? We have then precisely a situation where the stream cannot find ‘the transition to
…’ What will happen instead is a compression of water and an intensification of force.
Something comparable occurs when the drive is inhibited. Inhibition never stops the
driving force from coming. Indeed, the driving force is this and nothing but this: that it
keeps coming. What happens in inhibition, therefore, is that the driving force becomes
intense. This becoming-intense is the taking-place of being-there, if we interpret Dasein
in terms of the conative drive. Being-there is not accomplished, then, as the transition
from potentiality to actuality. It is accomplished in the point of transition itself. It takes
place here as the intensity of a force that keeps coming but is inhibited from actuali-
zation. Being-there is a lingering here so that the coming as such is felt: as pressure,
upheaval, mobilization, urge, desire and—perhaps we can risk this word as well—
jouissance.88
If we were to point to some experiential paradigms, our attention would—
interestingly enough—be drawn to basic phenomena of life such as urinating or
copulating. In the urge to urinate, for instance, a coming is certainly felt. And, as we
know, it can become quite pressing. This is why, when we relieve ourselves, there is a

86
Cf. Heidegger (1995a, pp. 241–246).
87
Heidegger (1995b, p. 180).
88
Cf. Nancy’s book Coming which opens with an explicitly Spinozian take on jouissance (2017, pp. 5–7).
 K. Lysemose

pleasure. This pleasure is hardly the happiness of a work well done, though. To describe
urinating as the actualization of a potentiality is obviously to strain these terms beyond
their proper scope. The outcome—which almost mocks the term ἔργον—testifies to the
fact that it was never about this outcome. The outcome here is only a fluid that
accompanies a coming. Urinating, then, is rather to feel a necessity and to take pleasure
in it. We are dealing with something like the pleasure of letting the coming come. And
this, obviously, is even more evident in copulation which also adds another important
dimension. Copulation—which after all is perhaps no stranger to the copula of being—
displays the being-with of being-there in the coming.89
Leaving these experiential paradigms aside, though, what we are interested in is
neither urinating nor copulating but being-there. The suggestion, then, is that being-
there takes place in the inhibition of the movement from potentiality to actuality. In this
inhibition, there is a drive about which it is important to notice two things: (a) that the
force of this drive comes in a certain sense before the inhibition or disinhibition of it
and (b) that the exercise of this drive is in a certain sense perfect. Let me explicate both
points.
Since the drive comes ‘before’ its inhibition or disinhibition and remains in full force
in either case, it points towards a dimension in Dasein indistinct from the animal. There
is, in other words, a dimension in being-there ‘older’ than being-there. We can perhaps
call this dimension ‘life’. Life, then, is a drive that drives being-there into being-there
just as it drives the animal into being-animal. But it comes itself ‘before’ both. From the
point of view of this drive the becoming-human or becoming-animal is therefore
indistinct. It is the same conatus. The drive as such is thus a becoming-X without
any definite telos to actualize.90 Nevertheless, what still distinguishes being-there is that
this drive becomes pressing. The drive becomes pressing in the inhibition of the drive
with respect to the passage from potentiality to actuality; and being-there takes place
here as a in suo esse perseverare in the proximity of a force that, as such, cannot be
inhibited.
This leads me to the second point. If this force cannot be inhibited—if it keeps
coming—then the drive as such is exercised with a certain perfection. This was, as we
have seen, also emphasized by Leibniz. How are we to understand this perfection? It is
interesting here to observe some remarks Heidegger makes on the Megarians vis-à-vis
the Aristotelian interpretation of potentiality and actuality.
At issue is what kind of reality a potentiality as potentiality has. According to the
Megarians, a potentiality is only real as actualized. For a potentiality to be truly
potential and not just a chimera, it must be actualized. Aristotle rejects this view and
shows that it leads to absurdities. Aristotle argues that it must be possible to have

89
The deconstruction of community under labels, such as ‘the coming community’ (Agamben) and ‘the
inoperative community’ (Nancy), could perhaps be approached from this perspective. It would then come as
no surprise that Nancy, as the thinker of the ‘with,’ indeed takes an interest in the case of copulation (cf., e.g.
2013a, p. 103). A recent book has the telling title Sexistence.
90
This is why the entelechy of Leibniz’ conatus does not correspond well with Aristotle’s line of thought. It is
perfection without teleology. But if conatus is not teleological, it does not mean that it is inertial. On the
existential reading we are suggesting here, conatus is rather a case of immanent causation, i.e., a causality
where the effect does not leave its cause but stays with it and belongs to it (cf., Deleuze (1992, pp. 171–172)). I
know of no better paradigm for this immanent relation of cause and effect than the structure of call and
response which I shall return to at the end of this paper.
The Force of Existence. Looking for Spinoza in Heidegger

(ἔχειν) a potentiality, which is real even though it is not being actualized (ἐνέργεια).
The Megarian concept of what is real is too narrow.
In keeping with this line of thought, Heidegger’s presentation is loyal to Aristotle.
However, this whole presentation comes with a noteworthy disclaimer since Heidegger
from the outset states that …

… what I am about to say is for you perhaps an empty assertion at present, but for
me it is a personal conviction, namely the following: One might rightfully doubt
whether Plato and Aristotle actually comprehended and overcame the central
objections of the Megarians. With this it may also remain undecided whether the
Megarians themselves knew what they for their part fundamentally wanted.91

What Heidegger announces here as a personal conviction—but leaves unelaborated—

could in fact be a point that connects him deeply to Spinoza. After all, Spinoza was
reputed for being the Megarian among the thinkers of early modernity.92
What the Megarians perhaps wanted—whether they knew it or not—was to
point out that something is covered over in the distinction between potentiality
and actuality. Aristotle himself testifies to this, when, in the Metaphysics, he
comments on the absurd consequence of the Megarian claim that a man who
sits down will lose his potentiality to rise up since he is not presently
actualizing this potentiality. On this score, Aristotle writes that the Megarians
make potentiality and actuality the same (ταὐτὸ) and suspend something
(ἀναιρεῖν, literally ‘lift something up’) of no little importance.93 And this
may in fact be true—but perhaps Aristotle is still missing the point (sit venio
verba!). The absurdity he makes of it even suggests as much. Could it not be
that there is something important at work which can only appear when poten-
tiality and actuality is suspended and become the same—and notably ‘at work’
then in another sense than the Aristotelian sense of ἐνέργεια in its correlation
with δύναμις? Where Aristotle saw a transition from potentiality to actuality—
but arguably never accounted for it—the Megarians may have seen in their
indistinction a certain necessity at work.
If this is the case, we are close to Spinoza, since conatus is a drive that is necessarily
exercised. On the strength of this drive, each mode does everything it can to persevere
in being. As Deleuze writes:

… the distinction between power [puissance] and act, on the level of modes,
disappears in favor of two equally actual powers, that of acting, and that of
suffering action, which vary inversely one to another, but whose sum is both
constant and constantly effective. [A mode] … has no power that is not actual: it
is at each moment all that it can be, its power is its essence.94

91
Heidegger (1995b, p. 141).
92
Cf. Renz (2009, p. 79).
93
Cf. Aristotle (1984, p. 1047a).
94
Deleuze (1992, p. 93).
 K. Lysemose

Following this line of thought, conatus is not just a potentiality one ‘has.’ It is never
a potentiality that can or cannot be put to work; and when it is at work, it can never be
more or less accomplished in a work. Rather, conatus is a force that is necessarily at
work; and when it is at work, it accomplishes itself wholly—not in a work, but in the
drive.
In this way, the conative drive is always perfectly exercised. Granted, it can be
inhibited with respect to the transition from potentiality to actuality. As we have seen,
however, this does not mean that the drive as such is inhibited. Drive, therefore, is an
action—or better: it is that in any action—that cannot fail. Any attempt to make it fail
will fail. Drive is self-driven by necessity. It cannot stop itself.95 There is nothing in the
drive that works contrary to its tendency. It is a drive-towards-self-as-self-driven-drive
and as such: self-preserving, self-sustaining, and self-affirming.
For Spinoza, there was a joy in this perfection which was not the happiness of
actualizing but, let us say then, the joy of virtualizing. A potential is actualized in a
work. We can evaluate the virtue involved according to the work (ἔργον) or according
to the actualization (ἐνέργεια)—by the standard of a poetical know-how (τέχνη) or by
the assessment of a practical judgment (φρόνησις). This otherwise important difference
matters little here, however, since it is at any rate different from the following: a force is
virtualized in a drive. How should we evaluate virtue here? It is not a matter of
actualizing a potentiality according to virtue. It is a matter of virtualizing. The force
that is virtualized does not become actual. But it is no less real and not at all merely
potential. Indeed, it is in a sense hyper-real since it comes with necessity and without
end. The virtue of virtualizing is to find oneself self-driven by this endless necessity. It

95
It is important not to confuse this necessity with the necessity of the disinhibitions that, according to
Heidegger, encircle the animal. The latter is a necessity of actualization. The former is a necessity that comes
‘before’ actualization and does not fail to come whether actualization is disinhibited or not. A further question
is whether Heidegger, with this concept of necessity, provides an opportunity to reconsider the primacy of
possibility (Möglichkeit) asserted in Being and Time (1996, p. 40). If so, the proximity to Spinoza would
obviously increase. Conversely, if this primacy makes of Heidegger a thinker of radical contingency, it makes
it difficult to establish their complicity. I am indebted to the anonymous reviewer who raised this issue.
Without being able to decide the matter conclusively, it is surely important to be aware that necessity, just as
possibility in Being and Time, must be understood existentially and not categorically—otherwise we leave the
dimension of existential analytic. Dasein does not have possibility in the sense of things present at hand that
could (presumably) be otherwise. Dasein is possibility in the sense of a potentiality to appropriate its own
‘there.’ Moreover, this ‘there’ is appropriated in a certain way that is always already decided. ‘It has [Es hat
sich] somehow [irgendwie] always already decided in which way [Weise] Da-sein is always my own.’ (Cf.
Heidegger (1996, p. 40)). This obviously poses the question of the impersonal ‘Es’ and the specification of its
‘irgendwie’ (cf. more generally on the impersonal Esposito (2012)). Leaving that aside, though, it seems to me
that Agamben is right in making a clear distinction between facticity, as the always-already decided way of
being, and contingency (cf. Agamben (1998, p. 87)). Heidegger, in this reading, does not endorse contingency
(Zufälligkeit) but only fallenness (Verfallenheit). As for the question what the replacement of the primacy of a
thus existentially understood possibility with an equally existentially understood necessity would entail, some
important clues are offered in Heidegger’s lectures on Schelling’s Treatise on the essence of human freedom.
As it turns out here, the essence of human freedom is necessity. ‘But what kind of necessity?,’ Heidegger asks.
‘Man,’ he continues, ‘… can only be free when he has himself decided originally for the necessity of his own
essence. This decision was not made at some time, at a point of time in the series of time, but falls as a decision
on temporality. Thus where temporality truly presences, […] man experiences the fact that he must always
already have been who he is, as he who has determined himself for this.’ (Heidegger (1985, p. 154–155)).
This, it seems, is not far from Spinoza’s necessity, which implies that agent regret is never the regret that I
could have done otherwise but did not. Rather, it is the regret that I turned out otherwise than I
imagined myself to be (cf. Pippin (2015, p. 660)).
The Force of Existence. Looking for Spinoza in Heidegger

is to find oneself not as one has actually become, nor as one could potentially have
been, but as one essentially is. Virtual being is being in essence.96 And what one
essentially is, is gifted with a force (vis, virtus) of which there is no shortage. This
blessedness (beatitudo), as we know from Spinoza, is not the reward of virtue but virtue
itself.97 The virtue of virtualizing, therefore, is to invigorate oneself with force of
existence. And this is not evaluated but rather enjoyed. It is enjoyed with an affirmative
joy that completely escapes all dialectics of actualization. We might say that to enjoy
being blessed in this way is the brilliance—the shining virtuosity—of being.

Potentiality-of-Being and Responsibility (Conclusion)

In the attempt to open a discourse on Spinoza and Heidegger, we have taken three small
steps. First, we observed Heidegger’s careful investigation into potentiality and actu-
ality in a lecture course on the Metaphysics of Aristotle. Heidegger did not dismiss this
distinction, but at the pinnacle of his analysis, he excavates a drive at the point where
the terms of this distinction become indistinct. Secondly, we saw that Heidegger, in a
previous lecture course on Leibniz, had already identified such a drive with the conatus.
In a third step, we could then point out how Heidegger, in yet another lecture course,
investigates the disinhibition and inhibition of such a drive in the animal and the human
being, respectively. This enabled us to distinguish explicitly between the drive with
respect to the transition from potentiality to actuality on the one hand and the drive as
such on the other. In the first respect, the drive can be disinhibited or inhibited; in the
second respect, it has an absolute intensity. At the level of this absolute intensity, we
were finally able to disclose a force that keeps coming and is always both necessarily
and perfectly exercised in the drive. This driving force did not belong specifically to
Dasein, though. We thus arrived at something in Dasein ‘older’ than Dasein. Never-
theless, in the inhibition of the drive with respect to the transition from potentiality to
actuality, Dasein emerges as a lingering in the proximity of this force.
From the vantage point of this analysis, we should be able now to understand better
the meaning of our initial hypothesis, i.e., that a deconstruction of the Aristotelian
framework in Being and Time will allow us to excavate the Spinozian nature of
potentiality-of-being (Seinkönnen). This existential, then, is not the actualization of a
potentiality, but the exercise of a conative drive. A re-interpretation of Being and Time
from this point of view seems a desideratum. As for now, our analysis may help us to
clarify the complicity of Spinoza and Heidegger in terms of the originary ethics that
Nancy drew our attention to in the beginning.

96
One avenue to explore from here would be ‘the ontology of the virtual’ along with the Latin semantic field
of vir (man), vis (force), and virtus (excellence, efficacy) including its derivatives, such as virtue, virtual, vigor,
virile, and violence. Here, only a brief remark: When Hegel plays what is merely potential (and possibly
chimerical) out against what has proved to be actual (by way of dialectics), the virtual could serve as a
Spinozian riposte. Consider that when the runner is ready in the starting blocks, he can be said to have virtually
already run. There is nothing chimerical here. All force is gathered, wholly active although not actualized.
Compared to this virtual force, what is merely actual adds nothing. It is only a banal acting-out of what is
already as good as done. Needless to add (and Heidegger must have had this in mind) that the analysis of the
runner, who in this way runs ahead of himself, should be seen as a development of the existential of running-
ahead (Vorlaufen).
97
Cf. Spinoza (2006, VP42).
 K. Lysemose

As will be remembered, we set out with an indistinction between ethics and

ontology. We have since been preoccupied with another indistinction that between
potentiality and actuality. By way of conclusion, we may therefore ask if we can
elucidate the former indistinction with the latter. Perhaps, the exercise of the conative
drive—right at the indistinction between potentiality and actuality—is the originary
ethicality of existence?
In the exercise of the conative drive, nothing is actualized. There is consequently not
yet any outcome that can be separated from and measured by some normative
standard.98 There is, however, the demand of being-there. This is why Agamben can
write: ‘When Spinoza defines essence as conatus, […] he thinks something like a
demand.’99 Still, it is undoubtedly Heidegger’s merit—more so than Spinoza’s—to
have carved out this demand in an explicit analysis.
According to Heidegger, there is indeed a demand of being. This is the call of
conscience (Ruf des Gewissen). And there is also a response to this call—in Being and
Time Heidegger names it being-guilty (Schuldigsein). By implication, potentiality-of-
being is structured as responsibility. It is paramount, though, to bracket here all
conceptions of responsibility relying on a metaphysics of subjectivity. First of all,
one must hear in the word ‘responsibility’ that it is precisely a response-ability. It is a
capability and should be analyzed as such. It is however—and this is the next step—a
privileged capability. This is what we saw already in our exposition of Aristotle.
Responsibility is not just a potentiality. It is in a way the potentiality of potentialities.
As such, it is not itself acquired or practiced like other potentialities that presupposes
it—but how then?
The attestation of potentiality-of-being in its proper mode occurs in the call of
conscience. This implies that Dasein not only exercises the capability to be. Dasein
also experiences this capability as an existential obligation. The exercise of it is
experienced as a response to a demand—and notably so that the demand itself elicits
the response. Dasein thus experiences at once that it should be and that it must be. It
experiences that it should be in the sense that it is called upon to exercise its capability
to be. It experiences that it must be in the sense that it cannot not exercise this
capability. And it experiences this at once in the sense of a syncopated beat consisting
in call and response. Let me unfold this a bit.
Dasein both is and ought to be. This is peculiar. Normally, a demand is revoked—
becomes superfluous—if things turn out already to be as demanded. This is not so in
the case of Dasein. What is demanded is that Dasein exercises the capability of being-
there. This demand is perfectly met. Dasein cannot not exercise it. Nevertheless, the
demand is not revoked. The question therefore is what to make of an action that cannot
not be exercised but remains a task. We can pose the question in the following way: the
call calls for the exercise of a capability that cannot not be exercised—why call for it
then?
In this respect, the call of conscience is somewhat like an alarm clock. If the alarm is
the demand that I should wake up, it will be too late to decide if I should comply with
this demand when I hear it. In hearing it, I have fulfilled it. Yet, this means in a certain
sense that it is impossible to fulfill the demand. Granted, it is not impossible because I

98
Cf. Kierkegaard (1983, p. 63).
99
Agamben (2016, p. 171), cf. also Agamben (2018, p. 32).
The Force of Existence. Looking for Spinoza in Heidegger

cannot fulfill it. I am awake and the demand is as such fulfilled. Rather, it is impossible
because I cannot not fulfill it. When I am ready to do what the alarm clock demands of
me, there is already nothing left to do. Any actualization comes too late for this
demand.
When the call of conscience demands being-there, this demand is equally impossible
to fulfill and for a similar reason: it is impossible not to fulfill. Before you do
something, the demand is already fulfilled in your capability of being responsive to
it. You are broken into before you can protect yourself—and perhaps even before there
is a self to protect, provided that being a self should mean being-there as a response to a
call. At any rate, such a call demands the impossible because it demands what cannot
fail. It is one thing to be obliged to do what cannot be done because it exceeds our
capabilities. In that case, we are dealing with a demand that violates the fair principle
that an ‘ought’ presupposes a ‘can.’ This is impossible in one sense: no matter what we
do, we will fall short. Another thing is to be obliged to do what cannot not be done.
This is impossible in another sense. We are dealing then with a demand that bypasses
us: no matter what we do, we come too late.
As respondents to such a call, our insufficiency—i.e., our being-guilty—does not
consist in a lack of capability or in not doing what is demanded. With our ability to
respond, nothing is lacking (and as Deleuze proclaims: ‘This is Spinoza’s great idea:
you never lack anything’).100 Rather, our insufficiency consists in being cut off from
our own most capability.101 We cannot do what we will always already have done
whenever we do something. We cannot render demand and fulfillment indistinct, even
though this is what they already are in the response to a call which, taken together,
constitutes our being-there. This inability, incidentally, is the reason why we know
conscience for the most part only as good or bad. We have then commitments to norms
about what should be and by which we measure and judge facts about what is. To have
such a normatively measurable conscience—whether good or bad—is, however,
consciencelessness itself (Gewissenslosigkeit) according to Heidegger.102 As soon as
being is distinct from well-being, realitas distinct from perfectio, and facts distinct from
norms, it means that we will have covered over the originary ethicality of our existence,
which is attested in the call of conscience.
It is important to insist that this call of conscience is both the condition of possibility
and impossibility of any normative commitment. Without it, such commitments would
be without address. Nevertheless and at the same time, it un-works what it makes
possible since its demand has no measure. It demands unconditionally but demands
nothing that can be separated as a norm from a fact. It is experienced, therefore, as the
indistinction between ought and is. I will have achieved what is demanded before I put
something to work. In this way, the demand confuses the distinction. But this does not
mean that we—respondents—are confused. It only means that we are addressed. If we
were confused, this would imply that there was at the bottom of the call an ‘ought’
separable from an ‘is,’ just in need of being sorted out. This is not the case. Rather,
being addressed by the call—and, by that token, being response-able—is the distinct
experience of their indistinction. It is a syncopated experience in two beats which, like

100
Deleuze (2017).
101
Cf. Deleuze (1992, p. 226, 240).
102
Cf. Heidegger (1996, p. 265).
 K. Lysemose

in a heartbeat, always come together although they never coincide. We can perhaps
transcribe it as follows: You shall …—this means that I am obliged to something (first
beat: ought) … be-there—but that is impossible to do, since it is already done by now
(second beat: is).
If what is and what should be is rendered indistinct in the call, it is ultimately
because what is called for is nothing but the response to this call. ‘Nothing but’ means
that there is not someone who hears the call and then decides to respond to it or not,
and—if the former—fulfill it or not. Rather, in hearing the call, it is already fulfilled.
And this fulfillment alone means that there is someone, i.e., a singularity irrevocably
engaged in being. Nancy thus writes—and since he got the first word, he might as well
get the last:

To be responsible is not, primarily, being indebted to or accountable before some

normative authority. It is to be engaged by one’s Being to the very end of this
Being, in such a way that this engagement or conatus is the very essence of
Being.103

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