VITALISM: ORIGIN, THEORY, REPRESENTATIVES, IN PHILOSOPHY, IN SCIENCE - CULTURE VOCABULARY - 2025

The vitalism was a stream of philosophical thought and scientific late nineteenth century and early twentieth taking into consideration the vitality as an essential part of being. He said that reason came from vitality and that life was an irrevocable reality.

Vitalism arose in opposition to rationalism, since it tried to give a human and moral character to the man that rationalism had eliminated. For vitalists, life is much longer than reason, and the origin and end of reason is life.

Friedrich Nietzsche is the main representative of the vitalist current. Source: pixabay.com

According to the theory of vitalism, all living organisms have a vital element that differentiates them from inanimate beings. This current of thought is used for animalistic, anti-abortion, pacifist and vegetarian causes, among others, with the intention of giving a vital character to all beings other than the inanimate ones.

Origin

In the sciences, vitalism originated in the 18th century as a separation between the living and the inert. In 1828 the theory was questioned when Friedrich Wöhler synthesized urea in a laboratory from inorganic compounds.

In philosophy, vitalism originated at the end of the 19th century and emerged as a clear response to the rationalism of authors such as Kant and Descartes, in whose works human reason was given special importance.

In the field of philosophy, the first to speak of vitalism was Schopenhauer, but the greatest exponent of this trend is undoubtedly Friedrich Nietzsche.

Theory and characteristics

The vitalist theory maintains that there is a vital force that constitutes the fundamental component that harmonizes both the mind and the body. From this notion, man is considered a mixture of body, mind and life force.

Main features

Vitalism is irrational: through reason you cannot capture the essence of being and vitalism is what gives meaning to it. According to vitalism, reality is characterized by being dynamic, and reason seeks to capture this dynamism and turn it into something static.

For vitalism, reality can only be perceived through sensations and emotions, which are characteristics opposed to reason, with which living is the only way to get closer to the true reality of existence.

Vitalism evolves in parallel with other doctrines that also seek to impose themselves against positivism and rationalism of the time. An example of a doctrine that went hand in hand with this is historicism.

Vitalism proposes connecting with reality in a human way. That is why it tries not to emit rational concepts about life, but rather tries to focus on perceiving reality through sensations, senses, emotions and impulses.

Representatives

-Friedrich Nietzsche

German philosopher who was born on October 15, 1844. He is considered the most prominent representative of vitalism. He studied philosophy and a few semesters of theology, and was a professor at the University of Basel.

His thinking is based on a deep criticism of Western culture, which according to him is based on values ​​that deny the vital factor of man.

Criticism of morality

In his critique of morality, Nietzsche preaches that Western ethics is totally rational, based on the fact that there is a superior being that controls everything and detaches itself from the vital will of man.

For Nietzsche the Western morality of the time is influenced by Socrates, Plato and Christianity, and has completely inverted moral values.

Criticism of religion

Nietzsche also makes a strong criticism of religion, specifically the Christian one. For him, Christianity has inverted and vulgarized values, making man fearful and guilty and not allowing him to feel and act on instincts.

The solution to this would be to do away with the fundamental pillar of religion which is God, and for morality to focus on the vital impulse.

Criticism of philosophy

He also criticized the philosophy of the time. The philosophical current before Nietzsche was positivism, a totally rational discipline that sees man as a static and unchanging being, concepts that Nietzsche firmly rejected with his vitalist thinking.

A concept that Nietzsche introduced was that of the superman, a being that would be the evolution of man. This would be an evolution that would occur when man forgot God and left himself alone.

The superman has the vital impulse as his life compass: he wants to live, improve himself and be in connection with the land on which he stands.

-Henri Bergson

Bergson was a philosopher and writer who was born in France on October 18, 1859. He won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1927.

Like Nietzsche, Bergson maintained in his philosophy the concept of vitalism but with different nuances.

This philosopher introduced the concept of élan vital: for him life is a tendency that develops in one way or another in different beings.

For example, the élan vital in plants develops to obtain nutrients, while in animals the élan vital appears, among other things, so that they can be able to move.

Bergson's vitalist concept differs from others, since pure vitalism speaks of the vital force as an irreversible phenomenon in all living beings, while for Bergson life develops in different ways in various living beings according to their needs. Because of this, the life force is not the same for all living beings.

-Maurice Blondel

He was a French philosopher who was born on November 2, 1861 and his masterpiece was the book entitled L'Action. Broadly speaking, his philosophy preached that action was what united all parts of the being and was a consequence of impulses and emotions, but also of reason.

Blondel was a Christian, and as such had religion very much in mind in his intellectual thoughts. The action tries to unite all the parts of the being: the rational, the spiritual and the vital force. According to Blondel, all these are influenced by the final action of being.

-José Ortega y Gasset

He was a philosopher and essayist who was born in Spain on May 9, 1883. He is considered within the current of thought of ratiovitalism.

Although Ortega y Gasset considered vital reason as the engine of life, he also tried to make reason compatible with pure existence.

He tried to find a middle ground between reason and vitalism. For him there is no opposition between the two, one does not replace the other but they complement each other. Reason is used by man to live; therefore, human intelligence is driven by vital impulses.

-Georg Ernst Stahl

He was a German physician and chemist born in 1660, and one of the most important representatives of vitalism in science. Within this context this current had its birth in the seventeenth century under the name of "animism", and in fact his father was Stahl.

What this scientist tried to explain with this theory was everything that biology and medicine could not; more specifically, the body's ability to regenerate and regulate itself.

For Stahl, the anima is the supreme value that gives life. It is found not only in visible movement but also in invisible movements of the body (digestive, respiratory and circulatory processes, among others).

The absence of the anima can be evidenced by death, since it is the moment when the body stops regulating and regenerating itself.

-Paul Joseph Barthez

French physician who was born on December 11, 1734. He was the father of the so-called "Montpellier vitalism."

Barthez defended the presence of a vital principle that originates all the organic functions of the human body. His thought was an intermediate between the mechanical explanations of the body and the supernatural.

He was trying to explain in a scientific way that there was a vital force that was the explanation of the physiological phenomena of the human body.

Vitalism in philosophy

In the field of philosophy, vitalism is known as vital philosophy. It arose in opposition to the rational currents of the time and tried to explain the being from an emotional, impulsive point of view, moved by vital energy and not by purely materialistic elements.

For the philosophy of vitalism, life is valuable in itself and alien to reason. However, there were philosophers like Blondel who explained vitalism without neglecting reason.

Vitalism in philosophy is much more ethereal than in science, since it takes emotional considerations and tries to give a spiritual sense to being, but not religious. Try to explain human existence based on vitality.

Vitalism in science

Scientific vitalism derives directly from biology. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries an attempt was made to explain various biological and physiological phenomena through vitalist thinking.

Although the explanation of scientific vitalism may seem supernatural, it is only a way of explaining that the human body is not only mechanical and inert, but that there is a vital force (called by some anima and by others a dominant force) that generates movements that allow the human body to regenerate and renew itself.

References

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