Statement given on October 07, 2014 at the ENS Lyon for the seminar organised in the framework of the International College of Philoophia by Julie Henry: Review ethics in health using spinozist anthropology: Classical age philosophy and today’s medicine. National hearing Acceptance is often assimilated to re-appointment, i.e. passive bidding behaviour. However, if acceptance is understood as the act by which the person who understands what happens to him takes note of it, without approving it, but on the contrary, it may appear to be the path that must necessarily be taken in order to better withstand the external causes that might disturb us. It is in this sense that being ill, which does not mean exactly the same thing as having an illness, requires such a path to be taken. In so far as understanding the causes that determine us necessarily makes us more alive, our conatus, this effort by which we continue to be so, can only be reinforced by acceptance by giving us the ‘strength of soul’ necessary to grasp the disease with a certain equanimity. The arrangements for such an understanding have yet to be defined. If, for the philosopher, this means intuitive knowledge, for the ignorant who remains to imaginative knowledge of it, this certainly means the narrative which enables the patient to be the author of a consistent reconfiguration of the happy or unfortunate events that mark his life.