Dictionary

vitalism en · NOUN

Etymology

Etymology tree English vital Proto-Indo-European *-id- Proto-Indo-European *-yéti Proto-Indo-European *-idyéti Proto-Hellenic *-íd͏̌d͏̌ō Ancient Greek -ῐ́ζω (-ĭ́zō) Proto-Indo-European *-mos Proto-Indo-European *-mós Ancient Greek -μός (-mós) Ancient Greek -ισμός (-ismós)der. English -ism English vitalism From vital + -ism.

Meanings

1. (countable, uncountable) The doctrine that life involves some immaterial "vital force", and cannot be explained scientifically.
   • It seems to me that in vitalism, there are people who are anti-Christian, like Bronze Age Pervert, like the Nazis. 2025 May 1, Ross Douthat, “The New Culture of the Right: Vital, Masculine and Intentionally Offensive”, in The New York Times, →ISSN:
   • 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. 2023, Cat Moir, “What Is Living and What Is Dead In Political Vitalism?”, in Christopher Donohue, Charles T. Wolfe, editors, Vitalism and Its Legacy in Twentieth Century Life Sciences and Philosophy, Springer Nature, →ISBN, page 258:

Forms

Deriveds

neovitalism · psychovitalism · antivitalism

Relateds

élan vital · panvitalism

Translations (21)

nl vitalisme (doctrine that life involves a "vital force") · fr vitalisme (doctrine that life involves a "vital force") · pl witalizm (doctrine that life involves a "vital force") · pt vitalismo (doctrine that life involves a "vital force") · el βιταλισμός (doctrine that life involves a "vital force") · ru витали́зм (doctrine that life involves a "vital force") · eo vitalismo (doctrine that life involves a "vital force") · de Vitalismus (doctrine that life involves a "vital force") · nb vitalisme (doctrine that life involves a "vital force") · sv vitalism (doctrine that life involves a "vital force") · io vitalismo (doctrine that life involves a "vital force") · vo lifälim (doctrine that life involves a "vital force") · da vitalisme (doctrine that life involves a "vital force") · es vitalismo (doctrine that life involves a "vital force") · ca vitalisme (doctrine that life involves a "vital force") · gl vitalismo (doctrine that life involves a "vital force") · fi vitalismi (doctrine that life involves a "vital force") · nn vitalisme (doctrine that life involves a "vital force") · it vitalismo (doctrine that life involves a "vital force") · cs vitalismus (doctrine that life involves a "vital force") · uk віталі́зм (doctrine that life involves a "vital force")