''Élan vital'' () is a term coined by
French philosopher
A philosopher is a person who practices or investigates philosophy. The term ''philosopher'' comes from the grc, φιλόσοφος, , translit=philosophos, meaning 'lover of wisdom'. The coining of the term has been attributed to the Greek th ...
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 in his 1907 book ''
Creative Evolution'', in which he addresses the question of self-organisation and spontaneous morphogenesis of things in an increasingly complex manner. ''Élan vital'' was translated in the English edition as "vital impetus", but is usually translated by his detractors as "vital force". It is a hypothetical explanation for
evolution
Evolution is change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. These characteristics are the expressions of genes, which are passed on from parent to offspring during reproduction. Variation ...
and
development
Development or developing may refer to:
Arts
*Development hell, when a project is stuck in development
*Filmmaking, development phase, including finance and budgeting
*Development (music), the process thematic material is reshaped
* Photograph ...
of
organisms
In biology, an organism () is any living system that functions as an individual entity. All organisms are composed of cells (cell theory). Organisms are classified by taxonomy into groups such as multicellular animals, plants, and fungi; ...
, which Bergson linked closely with
consciousness
Consciousness, at its simplest, is sentience and awareness of internal and external existence. However, the lack of definitions has led to millennia of analyses, explanations and debates by philosophers, theologians, linguisticians, and scien ...
– the intuitive perception of experience and the flow of inner time.
Precursors
Distant anticipations of Bergson can be found in the work of the pre-Christian
Stoic
Stoic may refer to:
* An adherent of Stoicism; one whose moral quality is associated with that school of philosophy
* STOIC, a programming language
* ''Stoic'' (film), a 2009 film by Uwe Boll
* ''Stoic'' (mixtape), a 2012 mixtape by rapper T-Pain
* ...
philosopher
Posidonius
Posidonius (; grc-gre, wikt:Ποσειδώνιος, Ποσειδώνιος , "of Poseidon") "of Apamea (Syria), Apameia" (ὁ Ἀπαμεύς) or "of Rhodes" (ὁ Ῥόδιος) (), was a Greeks, Greek politician, astronomer, astrologer, geog ...
, who postulated a "vital force" emanated by the sun to all living creatures on the Earth's surface, and in that of
Zeno of Elea
Zeno of Elea (; grc, Ζήνων ὁ Ἐλεᾱ́της; ) was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher of Magna Graecia and a member of the Eleatic School founded by Parmenides. Aristotle called him the inventor of the dialectic. He is best known fo ...
. The concept of ''élan vital'' is also similar to
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 ...
's concept of the
will-to-live and the Sanskrit ''āyus'' or "life principle".
Influence
The French philosopher
Gilles Deleuze
Gilles Louis René Deleuze ( , ; 18 January 1925 – 4 November 1995) was a French philosopher who, from the early 1950s until his death in 1995, wrote on philosophy, literature, film, and fine art. His most popular works were the two volu ...
attempted to recoup the novelty of Bergson's idea in his book ''Bergsonism'', though the term itself underwent substantial changes by Deleuze. No longer considered a
mystical
Mysticism is popularly known as becoming one with God or the Absolute, but may refer to any kind of ecstasy or altered state of consciousness which is given a religious or spiritual meaning. It may also refer to the attainment of insight in u ...
, elusive force acting on brute matter, as it was in the
vitalist
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 ...
debates of the late 19th century, ''élan vital'' in Deleuze's hands denotes an internal force, a substance in which the distinction between organic and inorganic matter is indiscernible, and the
emergence
In philosophy, systems theory, science, and art, emergence occurs when an entity is observed to have properties its parts do not have on their own, properties or behaviors that emerge only when the parts interact in a wider whole.
Emergence ...
of life undecidable.
In 1912
Beatrice M. Hinkle wrote that
Carl Gustav Jung
Carl Gustav Jung ( ; ; 26 July 1875 – 6 June 1961) was a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who founded analytical psychology. Jung's work has been influential in the fields of psychiatry, anthropology, archaeology, literature, philo ...
's conception of
libido
Libido (; colloquial: sex drive) is a person's overall sexual drive or desire for sexual activity. Libido is influenced by biological, psychological, and social factors. Biologically, the sex hormones and associated neurotransmitters that act up ...
was similar to Bergson's élan vital.
The notion of ''élan vital'' had considerable influence on the psychiatrist and phenomenologist
Eugène Minkowski
Eugène (Eugeniusz) Minkowski (; 17 April 1885 – 17 November 1972) was a French psychiatrist of Jewish Polish origin, known for his incorporation of phenomenology into psychopathology and for exploring the notion of "lived time". A student of ...
and his own concept of a ''personal élan'' – the element which keeps us in touch with a feeling of life.
The
French army
The French Army, officially known as the Land Army (french: Armée de Terre, ), is the land-based and largest component of the French Armed Forces. It is responsible to the Government of France, along with the other components of the Armed For ...
incorporated the doctrine of ''élan vital'' into its thinking during the leadup to the
First World War
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
by arguing that the spirit of individual soldiers was more important for victory than weapons.
Criticism
* The general consensus of geneticists is that they see no "life force" other than the organisational matrix contained in the
genes
In biology, the word gene (from , ; "...Wilhelm Johannsen coined the word gene to describe the Mendelian units of heredity..." meaning ''generation'' or ''birth'' or ''gender'') can have several different meanings. The Mendelian gene is a ba ...
themselves, according to R.F. Weir.
* The
British
British may refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies.
** Britishness, the British identity and common culture
* British English, ...
secular humanist
Secular humanism is a philosophy, belief system or life stance that embraces human reason, secular ethics, and philosophical naturalism while specifically rejecting religious dogma, supernaturalism, and superstition as the basis of morality ...
biologist
A biologist is a scientist who conducts research in biology. Biologists are interested in studying life on Earth, whether it is an individual Cell (biology), cell, a multicellular organism, or a Community (ecology), community of Biological inter ...
Julian Huxley
Sir Julian Sorell Huxley (22 June 1887 – 14 February 1975) was an English evolutionary biologist, eugenicist, and internationalist. He was a proponent of natural selection, and a leading figure in the mid-twentieth century modern synthesis. ...
dryly remarked that Bergson's ''élan vital'' is no better an explanation of life than is explaining the operation of a railway engine by its ''élan locomotif'' ("locomotive driving force"). The same alleged epistemological fallacy is parodied in
Molière
Jean-Baptiste Poquelin (, ; 15 January 1622 (baptised) – 17 February 1673), known by his stage name Molière (, , ), was a French playwright, actor, and poet, widely regarded as one of the greatest writers in the French language and world ...
's ''
Le Malade imaginaire
''The Imaginary Invalid'', ''The Hypochondriac'', or ''The Would-Be Invalid'' (French title ''Le Malade imaginaire'', ) is a three- act ''comédie-ballet'' by the French playwright Molière with dance sequences and musical interludes (H.495, H.49 ...
'', where a
quack
Quack, The Quack or Quacks may refer to:
People
* Quack Davis, American baseball player
* Hendrick Peter Godfried Quack (1834–1917), Dutch economist and historian
* Joachim Friedrich Quack (born 1966), German Egyptologist
* Johannes Quack (b ...
"answers" the question of "Why does
opium
Opium (or poppy tears, scientific name: ''Lachryma papaveris'') is dried latex obtained from the seed capsules of the opium poppy ''Papaver somniferum''. Approximately 12 percent of opium is made up of the analgesic alkaloid morphine, which i ...
cause sleep?" with "Because of its
soporific
Hypnotic (from Greek ''Hypnos'', sleep), or soporific drugs, commonly known as sleeping pills, are a class of (and umbrella term for) psychoactive drugs whose primary function is to induce sleep (or surgical anesthesiaWhen used in anesthesia ...
power". However, Huxley happily used the term ''élan vital'' in a more metaphorical sense:
* The author and popular Christian theologian
C. S. Lewis
Clive Staples Lewis (29 November 1898 – 22 November 1963) was a British writer and Anglican lay theologian. He held academic positions in English literature at both Oxford University (Magdalen College, 1925–1954) and Cambridge Univers ...
rejected Bergson's concept in his essay ''The Weight of Glory'' stating "...even if all the happiness they promised could come to man on earth, yet still each generation would lose it by death, including the last generation of all, and the whole story would be nothing, not even a story, for ever and ever. Hence all the nonsense that Mr. Shaw puts into the final speech of Lilith, and Bergson's remark that the élan vital is capable of surmounting all obstacles, perhaps even death—as if we could believe that any social or biological development on this planet will delay the senility of the sun or reverse the
second law of thermodynamics
The second law of thermodynamics is a physical law based on universal experience concerning heat and Energy transformation, energy interconversions. One simple statement of the law is that heat always moves from hotter objects to colder objects ( ...
."
[C. S. Lewis, Essay Collection'' (2000) p. 99]
See also
*
Emergence
In philosophy, systems theory, science, and art, emergence occurs when an entity is observed to have properties its parts do not have on their own, properties or behaviors that emerge only when the parts interact in a wider whole.
Emergence ...
*
Joie de vivre
( , ; "joy of living") is a French phrase often used in English to express a cheerful enjoyment of life, an exultation of spirit.
It "can be a joy of conversation, joy of eating, joy of anything one might do… And ''joie de vivre'' may be ...
*
Orthogenesis
Orthogenesis, also known as orthogenetic evolution, progressive evolution, evolutionary progress, or progressionism, is an obsolete biological hypothesis that organisms have an innate tendency to evolve in a definite direction towards some go ...
*
Parable of the Invisible Gardener
The Parable of the Invisible Gardener is a tale originally told by John Wisdom. It was later developed in the university debate by Antony Flew, who made several important alterations such as changing the gardeners to explorers and making the origin ...
*
Vis viva
''Vis viva'' (from the Latin for "living force") is a historical term used for the first recorded description of what we now call kinetic energy in an early formulation of the principle of conservation of energy.
Overview
Proposed by Gottfried L ...
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Elan vital
Henri Bergson
Vitalism
Concepts in metaphysics
Emergence