Criticism of society from vitalism

Abstract

This essay aims to analyze how vitalism, understood as a philosophical movement that emphasizes the importance of life and subjective experience, has historically served as a critique of various social concepts and structures that distance human beings from their essential vitality. It shows how this approach has, at different times, questioned mechanism, rationalism, capitalism, modernity, and social institutions, proposing a vision centered on life, individuality, and experience. The method used was of a historical-philosophical and hermeneutical nature, resorting to classical and contemporary sources, where debates and confrontations between vitalism and other currents are examined, highlighting the contrast between mechanistic and vitalistic explanations of natural and social phenomena. Among the results, it is identified that vitalism has allowed a profound critique of systems that privilege reason, objectivity, and linearity; highlighting instead the importance of subjectivity, uncertainty, and vitality. In addition to its influence on philosophy, science, sociology, literature and other areas; it is concluded that vitalism remains relevant to understand and question current social dynamics, especially those that subordinate life to the logic of consumption, production and institutional control, which is why it is proposed to recover the vitalist perspective to focus the past, present and future on life itself, promoting reflection on the being and its environment.