Vitalism
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 The doctrine that life involves some immaterial "vital force", and cannot be explained scientifically. countable, uncountable
"Theories and philosophies of vitalism are concerned with the distinction between life and non-life in some form. Given this emphasis, vitalism always has political stakes: where the boundary between life and non-life is drawn is, as theorists of biopolitics have shown, a supremely political matter […] Historically, vitalism has been associated with conservatism and fascism in ways that are sometimes genealogically defensible, sometimes only with difficulty or not at all."
- 2 (philosophy) a doctrine that life is a vital principle distinct from physics and chemistry wordnet
Example
More examples"Theories and philosophies of vitalism are concerned with the distinction between life and non-life in some form. Given this emphasis, vitalism always has political stakes: where the boundary between life and non-life is drawn is, as theorists of biopolitics have shown, a supremely political matter […] Historically, vitalism has been associated with conservatism and fascism in ways that are sometimes genealogically defensible, sometimes only with difficulty or not at all."
Etymology
From vital + -ism.
Related phrases
More for "vitalism"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.