Access to the full text of the entire article is only available to members of institutions that have purchased access. If you belong to such an institution, please log in or find out more about how to order.


Article

Vitalism By Bradd, Christopher

DOI: 10.4324/9781135000356-REM1377-1
Published: 02/05/2017
Retrieved: 19 March 2024, from
https://www.rem.routledge.com/articles/vitalism

Article

Vitalism is a philosophy of life that ascribes a vital principle or animating life-force to the processes of living organisms. Against the assertions of mechanistic thought, which held that the processes of living organisms could be explained by the chemical or mechanical interaction of their associative parts, vitalist discourse, in the seventeenth century, reasserted the ancient and irreducible distinction between living and non-living beings. In the nineteenth century, the doctrine was given metaphysical expression in the work of Herbert Spencer (1820–1903) and later by Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900), who proclaimed that art was ‘the great stimulant of life’ (452).

content locked

Published

02/05/2017

Article DOI

10.4324/9781135000356-REM1377-1

Print

Citing this article:

Bradd, Christopher. Vitalism. Routledge Encyclopedia of Modernism, Taylor and Francis, https://www.rem.routledge.com/articles/vitalism.

Copyright © 2016-2024 Routledge.