Vitalism and the Metaphysics of Life

Abstract

I examine a series of definitions, defences and rejections of early modern vitalism. This yields a broad distinction between more or less metaphysically committed forms of vitalism. Given the plurivocity of the term, I suggest that we restrict the term ‘vitalist’ to thinkers who are actively concerned with the distinction between life and non-life (whether or not they substantialize this distinction), with special reference to the case of eighteenth-century Montpellier vitalism – where the term was first explicitly used. Further, I discuss the association of vitalism with a (potentially problematic) metaphysics of life as partly a polemical construct – which is internal to the process of defining projects and programs in life science, where one vital(istical)ly oriented author will, almost desperately, seek to brand a predecessor or a rival as a vitalist in order to legitimize her own apparently more ‘experimental’ brand of organicism. But perhaps metaphysics is endemic to vitalism?