Life Philosophy.

You have not read or at least not understood what life philosophy is, how it is defined. Life philosophy (by definition) does not have to cover the whole of reality. This is already said in this thread. Just try to read it.

And it is also not simply meant as “a way of life”.

Thank you very much.

Or he (?).

:-k

Is it possible to clearly define vitalism?

Here’s my attempt. Vitalism would be an idea that there is some kind of vital force that permeates everything. A sort of substance monism, I’d say. Or rather, substance monism regarding living beings. Non-living beings appear to be excluded.

I don’t know how true this is. So it’s someone else’s turn to correct me and/or offer better, more accurate, definition.

Unless we’re confining ourselves to philosophers per se and not thinking out of the box –

a life philosopher can also be an artist, a poet, painter - they too are life philosophers.

Baruch who wrote Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 was a life philosopher.

A Time for Everything
3 There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under the heavens:
2 a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,
3 a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,
4 a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,
5 a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
6 a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away,
7 a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak,
8 a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace.

Anyone who observes, studies and portrays life in all of its subjectivity, objectivity, truth, meaning, can be considered to be a life philosopher.
I believe that existentialists are life philosophers.

Shakespeare was a great life philosopher. Van Gogh was one, Picasso was one…Dostoevsky was one…

Vitalism means that the organic life has a special vitality ("vis vitalis“) effecting life phenomenons that depend on that vitality. Vitalism rejects the exclusively mechanical and chemical explanation of life processes. The Neovitalism assumes that there is a teleologically effecting factor called "entelechy“, which is an Aristotelian term.

Isn’t vital force yet another name for mind, spirit, soul, consciousness?

Vitalism then would just be the idea that the immaterial (= mental) is more fundamental than the material (= physical.)

Solipsism in a sense.

The behavior/actions/spirit that defines a life versus anything else could be referred to as “vitalis”, “orgone”, or “life force”. Some still believe that the vitalis force/behavior that we call “life” is not an emergent force from more fundamental forces of physics, but an entirely separate force.

As an emergent force, it obviously exists. But as a physically separate force from the “forces” of fundamental physics (once properly understood), I don’t think so.

There is a branch within the vitalism (especially neovitalism) that claims that the phenomena of life are not explainable by physicochemical “laws” (rules) but have their own “laws” (rules) that can be put down to a psyche-like “force” (=> Psychovitalism) or explained by the “entelechy” (as I already said).

Yes.

It is at least hard to believe that such a separate force exists, but that does not mean that it is not possible. Compare it, for instance, with the Aristotelian “entelechy”, although it is not exactly the same. To Goethe entelechy was “ein Stück Ewigkeit, das den Körper lebend durchdringt” (“a piece of eternity that gets lively through the body”).

Would Marquis De Sade or Diderot count?

What do you think of poets, dramatists, and fiction writers?

Interestingly, the Fibonacci numbers show some noteworthly mathematical specific features:

Due to the relations to the previous and the following number growth in nature seems to follow an addition law. The Fibonacci numbers are directly associated with the golden cut. The further one progresses subsequently, the more the quotient of successive numbers approaches to the golden cut (1,6180339887…) - for example: 13:8=1.625; 21:13=1.6153846; 34:21=1.6190476; 55:34=1.6176471; 89:55=1.6181818; 144:89=1.617978; 233:144=1.6180556; … and so on). This approach is alternating - the quotients are alternately smaller and bigger than the golden cut (golden number, golden ratio):


The Fibonacci numbers are the sums of the „shallow“diagonals (shown in red) of Pascal’s triangle:

Maybe the Fibonacci sequence and the Golden cut are such a principle or force.

All life-philosophically relevant writers or tellers are also welcomed to this thread. :wink:

Say during a person’s years of formal education… studying up to multiple subjects going into double figures, wouldn’t that harvest a whole crop of philosophical influences on that person? from authors to artists to designers to etc.

A life philosophy can be based on multiple aspects of influence… Did you choose Goethe as one example?

Hmm … :-k

Yes, … if you like … :slight_smile:

It certainly can be…

"Do you know I’ve been sitting here thinking to myself: that if I didn’t believe in life, if I lost faith in the woman I love, lost faith in the order of things, were convinced in fact that everything is a disorderly, damnable, and perhaps devil-ridden chaos, if I were struck by every horror of man’s disillusionment – still I should want to live. Having once tasted of the cup, I would not turn away from it till I had drained it! At thirty though, I shall be sure to leave the cup even if I’ve not emptied it, and turn away – where I don’t know. But till I am thirty I know that my youth will triumph over everything – every disillusionment, every disgust with life. I’ve asked myself many times whether there is in the world any despair that could overcome this frantic thirst for life. And I’ve come to the conclusion that there isn’t, that is until I am thirty.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

IT may not be stretching a point to say that being sent to prison was the best thing that ever happened to Fyodor Dostoyevsky. The alternative, death by firing squad, was certainly less appealing. And most observers have agreed that the years Dostoyevsky spent in Siberian imprisonment and exile from 1850 to 1859 were beneficial to his development as a man, writer and thinker, transforming him from a rather vain and hypersensitive prima donna flushed with overnight literary success (following the publication of his Dickensian novel ‘‘Poor Folk’’) into a serious and confident artist. What Dostoyevsky gained in prison - a remarkable breadth of tragic vision and a painful new understanding of the violent, irrepressible human impulse toward self-expression - he later injected into the novels he started writing soon after returning to civilization: ‘‘Crime and Punishment,’’ ‘‘The Possessed,’’ ‘‘The Idiot’’ and ‘‘The Brothers Karamazov.’’ Dostoyevsky’s experiences in Siberia haunted him for the rest of his life and provided an inexhaustible stock of material that both inspired and terrified him. They also gave him lifetime membership in the distinguished club (still thriving, unfortunately) of Russian writers and intellectuals rewarded for their heretical political, philosophical or esthetic views with an unplanned sabbatical in the Eastern steppe.
nytimes.com/1986/08/31/books … wanted=all

Ahhhhh come on man Arm… give me something to work with here :confusion-shrug:

:laughing:

You good yeah?

“Philosopher x was Jewish. Therefore I think not.”

Magnus razor.

OP: look at the Presocratics. To my mind the most vital of all.

A nice biographical piece Arc.

Do you have the one… or the many… influences on your life so far, Arc… imprisonment not expected to be one of them. :wink:

Work with Goethe’s works, for example (?) .

:laughing: ?

I good?