Editing Openai/696627d0-7ad0-8006-b4d8-11340c897370 (section)

=== Assistant: Exactly — and your intuition is spot on. ===
Exactly — and your intuition is spot on. This is not a minor linguistic nuance; it goes straight to the heart of Spinoza.

You’re right to feel uneasy with “power” in English.

==== Potência vs Poder (and why Spinoza cares) ====

In Portuguese (and also in Latin and French), the distinction is much clearer:
* Potência → capacity, potential, intensity, ability to act
* Poder → authority, domination, command, control over others

Spinoza is entirely on the side of potentia, and deeply suspicious of potestas.

==== Spinoza’s original terms ====

Spinoza writes in Latin:
* potentia → immanent power, capacity to act
* potestas → institutional or coercive power

When English translates both as “power”, something crucial is lost.

Spinoza’s ethics is about:

: increasing one’s potentia agendi (capacity to act)

Not:

: acquiring power over others.

==== Why “potência” is the right word ====

When Spinoza says joy is an increase in power, he means:
* more coherence between mind and body
* more adequate ideas
* more internal determination
* more capacity to affect and be affected

In Portuguese:

: Alegria = aumento da potência de agir

That sounds exactly right.

If we said:

: aumento do poder de agir

…it already smells of hierarchy, command, even politics — which is not what Spinoza means.

==== Conatus + Potência ====

Conatus is not a will to dominate.
It is a tendency to persist by expressing one’s potência.

A stone has potência.
A plant has potência.
An animal has potência.
A human has potência.

Different structures → different capacities → different expressions of conatus.

No moral ranking.

==== A beautiful side effect (very Spinozist) ====

This linguistic distinction also explains why Spinoza:
* rejects guilt-based morality
* rejects asceticism
* rejects transcendence

Ethics becomes:

: learning what composes with us and increases our potência

Not:

: obeying rules imposed by an external poder.

==== Deleuze saw this very clearly ====

This is why Gilles Deleuze insists so strongly on:
* puissance (French)
* intensity
* affect
* immanence

Deleuze is basically saying:

: Stop translating Spinoza into the language of kings, priests, and judges.

==== A compact translation guide (very useful) ====

If you ever mentally “translate” Spinoza, I’d suggest:
* power → potência
* freedom → autodeterminação
* virtue → eficácia existencial
* good/bad → what increases/decreases potência

Suddenly, Spinoza stops sounding moralistic and starts sounding… biological.

Which, given everything you like about ethology and evolution, feels exactly right 🧠🌱

If you want, next we can:
* map potência onto modern biology
* link conatus to homeostasis and predictive processing
* or contrast Spinoza’s potência with Nietzsche’s will to power (very instructive)

Just say the word.