(; meaning '

philosophy of life (; meaning ' philosophy of life') was a dominant philosophical movement of German-speaking countries in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, which had developed out of German Romanticism. emphasised the meaning, value and purpose of life a ...

') was a dominant philosophical movement of

German-speaking countries The following is a list of the countries and territories where German is an official language (also known as the Germanosphere). It includes countries that have German as (one of) their nationwide official language(s), as well as dependent terr ...

in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, which had developed out of German Romanticism. emphasised the meaning, value and purpose of life as the foremost focus of philosophy. Its central theme was that an understanding of

life Life is a quality that distinguishes matter that has biological processes, such as signaling and self-sustaining processes, from that which does not, and is defined by the capacity for growth, reaction to stimuli, metabolism, energy ...

can only be apprehended by life itself, and from within itself. Drawing on the critiques of

epistemology Epistemology (; ), or the theory of knowledge, is the branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge. Epistemology is considered a major subfield of philosophy, along with other major subfields such as ethics, logic, and metaphysics. Epi ...

offered by

Schopenhauer Arthur Schopenhauer ( , ; 22 February 1788 – 21 September 1860) was a German philosopher. He is best known for his 1818 work ''The World as Will and Representation'' (expanded in 1844), which characterizes the phenomenal world as the pr ...

and

Nietzsche Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (; or ; 15 October 1844 – 25 August 1900) was a German philosopher, prose poet, cultural critic, philologist, and composer whose work has exerted a profound influence on contemporary philosophy. He began his car ...

, notable ideas of the movement have been seen as precursors to both Husserlian phenomenology and Heideggerian

existential phenomenology Existential phenomenology encompasses a wide range of thinkers who take up the view that philosophy must begin from experience like phenomenology, but argues for the temporality of personal existence as the framework for analysis of the human cond ...

. criticised both

mechanistic The mechanical philosophy is a form of natural philosophy which compares the universe to a large-scale mechanism (i.e. a machine). The mechanical philosophy is associated with the scientific revolution of early modern Europe. One of the first expo ...

and

materialist Materialism is a form of philosophical monism which holds matter to be the fundamental substance in nature, and all things, including mental states and consciousness, are results of material interactions. According to philosophical materiali ...

approaches to science and philosophy and as such has also been referred to as the German vitalist movement, though its relationship to biological vitalism is questionable.

Vitality Vitality (, , ) is the capacity to live, grow, or develop. More simply it is the property of having life. The perception of vitality is regarded as a basic psychological drive and, in philosophy, a component to the will to live. As such, peopl ...

in this sense is instead understood as part of a biocentric distinction between life-affirming and life-denying principles.

Overview

Inspired by the critique of

rationalism In philosophy, rationalism is the epistemological view that "regards reason as the chief source and test of knowledge" or "any view appealing to reason as a source of knowledge or justification".Lacey, A.R. (1996), ''A Dictionary of Philosophy' ...

in the works of

Arthur Schopenhauer Arthur Schopenhauer ( , ; 22 February 1788 – 21 September 1860) was a German philosopher. He is best known for his 1818 work ''The World as Will and Representation'' (expanded in 1844), which characterizes the phenomenal world as the prod ...

Søren Kierkegaard Søren Aabye Kierkegaard ( , , ; 5 May 1813 – 11 November 1855) was a Danish theologian, philosopher, poet, social critic, and religious author who is widely considered to be the first existentialist philosopher. He wrote critical texts on ...

, and

Friedrich Nietzsche Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (; or ; 15 October 1844 – 25 August 1900) was a German philosopher, prose poet, cultural critic, philologist, and composer whose work has exerted a profound influence on contemporary philosophy. He began his ...

, emerged in 19th-century Germany as a reaction to the rise of

positivism Positivism is an empiricist philosophical theory that holds that all genuine knowledge is either true by definition or positive—meaning ''a posteriori'' facts derived by reason and logic from sensory experience.John J. Macionis, Linda M. G ...

and the theoretical focus prominent in much of post-Kantian philosophy. Michael Friedman, ''A Parting of the Ways: Carnap, Cassirer, and Heidegger'', Open Court, 2013. While often rejected by academic philosophers, it had strong repercussions in the arts. The movement bore indirect relation to the subjectivist philosophy of

vitalism Vitalism is a belief that starts from the premise that "living organisms are fundamentally different from non-living entities because they contain some non-physical element or are governed by different principles than are inanimate things." Wher ...

developed by

Henri Bergson Henri-Louis Bergson (; 18 October 1859 – 4 January 1941) was a French philosopherHenri Bergson. 2014. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Retrieved 13 August 2014, from https://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/61856/Henri-Bergson Le Roy, ...

, which lent importance to immediacy of experience. Twentieth-century forms of can be identified with a critical stress on norms and conventions. The Israeli-American historian Nitzan Lebovic identified with the tight relation between a "corpus of life-concepts" and what the German education system came to see, during the 1920s, as the proper ''Lebenskunde'', the 'teaching of life' or 'science of life'—a name that seemed to support the broader philosophical outlook long held by most biologists of the time. In his book Lebovic traces the transformation of the post-Nietzschean from the radical aesthetics of the

Stefan George Stefan Anton George (; 12 July 18684 December 1933) was a German symbolist poet and a translator of Dante Alighieri, William Shakespeare, Hesiod, and Charles Baudelaire. He is also known for his role as leader of the highly influential literary ...

Circle to Nazi or " biopolitical" rhetoric and politics.Nitzan Lebovic, ''The Philosophy of Life and Death: Ludwig Klages and the Rise of a Nazi Biopolitics'', Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. This philosophy pays special attention to ''life'' as a whole, which can only be understood from within. The movement can be regarded as a rejection of

Kantian Kantianism is the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, a German philosopher born in Königsberg, Prussia (now Kaliningrad, Russia). The term ''Kantianism'' or ''Kantian'' is sometimes also used to describe contemporary positions in philosophy of mind, ...

abstract philosophy or scientific reductionism of positivism.

List of notable theorists

References

External Links

;Academic journals
Journal of Philosophy of Life
{{Authority control Personal life

Life Life is a quality that distinguishes matter that has biological processes, such as signaling and self-sustaining processes, from that which does not, and is defined by the capacity for growth, reaction to stimuli, metabolism, energy ...

German philosophy Criticism of rationalism

Overview

List of notable theorists

See also

References

Further reading

External Links