Relation to the world· Nature and the living
Vitalism
Axis: Explaining nature — How should natural phenomena be explained: by mechanisms, by purposes, or by a vital impulse?
Life cannot be reduced either to mechanics or to a pre-established plan: it is a creative, unpredictable impulse that invents new forms. Understanding the living requires a different approach from that of the physical sciences.
Movements 1
Romanticismexplicit
To the Enlightenment's universe-machine, Romanticism opposes a living nature: an animate organism, shot through with forces and a soul, not a system of gears without inwardness. 's thinks nature as a subject in becoming, in which spirit gradually awakens to itself. Mechanism is rejected not by a return to theological finalism, but in the name of a life that precedes and overflows its parts.
Schelling, Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature · Goethe, The Metamorphosis of Plants