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Draft:Lifeism

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  • Comment: The article has currently assembled a hefty handful of one-line quotes using the term "lifeism", but none of the quoted writers appear to be referring to each other or building on an established concept of lifeism -- they seem to be coining a neologism as part of a discussion of other topics. To show that "Lifeism" is an established philosophical concept, we'd want to see several sources that are explicitly about it, not just using the term once or twice. Something like Tateyama's book would work, except it needs to be a reliable source, with a publisher (preferably an academic one), rather than self-published. ~ L 🌸 (talk) 18:42, 13 June 2025 (UTC)

Lifeism (sometimes spelled life-ism or lifism) is a term that has been used by writers since the early 20th century for philosophies centred around Life itself.

In early 20th century China, along with Utilitarianism, 'Life-ism' was a popular philosophy espoused by Liang Qichao and Yan Fu (but criticized by Wang Guowei) that aimed to continuously preserve and maximize the quantity of life.[1] In his essay, Lifeism Chinese philosopher Shi Zhengbang introduced Henri Bergson's theory of life and highlighted that the core of his thoughts was to 'love life'.[2]

In his 1927 novella Kappa (Japanese: 河童) Japanese author Ryūnosuke Akutagawa writes of a fictious religion called 'Lifeism' whose adherents believe their God, the Tree of Life, teaches them to 'live avidly'.[3]

In his 1992 book entitled Columbus and Other Cannibals, American historian Jack D. Forbes wrote that the animism of native and folk religious beliefs of Africa, Asia and the Americas was synonymous with "life-ism", and that "perhaps that is what we need, "lifeism", more respect for life, more respect for the living, more respect for all forms of life."[4]

In his 2002 book entitled Derrida and Husserl: The Basic Problem of Phenomenology, American academic and author Leonard Lawlor uses the term "life-ism" to refer to a unified field within the 20th century continental philosophy of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze, Martin Heidegger and Michel Foucault, that focuses on life and death, involving concepts such as Edmund Husserl's Erlebnis and Henri Bergson's Élan vital.[5] This is echoed by Michael R. Kelly in his 2016 book Phenomenology and the Problem of Time in which he writes that there is a certain lifeism in French Phenomenology from the 1940s onwards, citing as examples Jean-Paul Sartre's Transcendence of the Ego which influenced Deleuze, Merleau-Ponty's idea of latent intentionality, the flesh, wild-being; Michel Henry's monolith on life that starts with his Essence of Manifestation', and Jean-Luc Marion's Being Given.[6]

In his 2006 book entitled The Things Themselves: Phenomenology and the Return to the Everyday American author and academic, H. Peter Steeves writes, 'We are obsessed with life, we who are alive. It is, I think, a prejudice - a sort of "lifeism".[7]

There's the Lifeism embraced by Anthony J. Marsella (1940-2024), an American author and academic who advocated in 2008 that identification with life is our most essential and most authentic identity.[8]

In his 2011 book, Placing Nature on the Borders of Religion, Philosophy and Ethics American academic and author Forrest Clingerman indicates a suspicion of such a worldview, echoing the concern of Wang Guowei by writing, "I love life. And I love living things. But I worry that as ethicists we have fallen into a bias: we are lifeists. And like sexism, racism, classism and speciesism, lifeism must be overcome."[9]

Lifeism − The Next Worldview After Capitalism is also the name of a 2024 self-published book by Japanese systems engineer, Joe Tateyama.[10]

See also

[edit]
  • Biocentrism – Ethical point of view that extends inherent value to all living things
  • Biologism – Research paradigm in behavioural genetics
  • Biophilia hypothesis – Idea that humans innately seek connections with the natural world
  • Ecocentrism – Stance of environmentalism that values should be centered around nature, not humanity
  • Existentialism – Philosophical form of enquiry into subjective existence
  • Lebensphilosophie – German philosophical movement in the late 19th and early 20th centuries
  • Lifeworld – Epistemological concept
  • Meaning of Life – Philosophical and spiritual question
  • Nonkilling – Approach to nonviolence
  • Orthogenesis – Hypothesis that organisms have an innate tendency to evolve towards some goal
  • Speciesism – Philosophical term on species treatment
  • Reverence for Life – Concept in Albert Schweitzer's ethical philosophy
  • Utilitarianism – Ethical theory based on maximizing well-being
  • Vitalism – Belief about living organisms
  • Will to live – Philosophical concept

References

[edit]
  1. ^ Liu, Joyce C H (2012). The Translation of Ethics. Netherlands: Rodopi. p. 88. ISBN 978-94-012-0719-5. Retrieved 13 June 2025.
  2. ^ Li, Sha (2017). The Reception of Human Rights in Early Modern China: 1897 - 1927. Italy: Key. p. 84. ISBN 978-88-6959-884-5. Retrieved 13 June 2025.
  3. ^ Akutagawa, Ryunosuke (1927). Kappa. Japan. Retrieved 13 June 2025.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  4. ^ Forbes, Jack D. (1992). Columbus and Other Cannibals. USA: D–Q University Press. p. 178. ISBN 978-1-58322-982-8. Retrieved 13 June 2025.
  5. ^ Lawlor, Leonard (2002). Derrida and Husserl: The Basic Problem of Phenomenology. USA: Indiana University Press. ISBN 978-0-253-10915-6. Retrieved 13 June 2025.
  6. ^ Kelly, Michael R. (2016). Phenomenology and the Problem of Time. USA: Palgrave Macmillan. p. 103.
  7. ^ Steeves, H. Peter (2006). The Things Themselves - Phenology and the return to the every day. USA: State University of New York Press. p. 142. ISBN 978-0-7914-8127-1. Retrieved 10 June 2025.
  8. ^ Marsella, Anthony J. "Identity: Beyond Self, Culture, Nation, and Humanity to "Lifeism"". transcend.org. Transcend Media Services. Retrieved 26 May 2025.
  9. ^ Forrest Clingerman; Mark H Dixon, eds. (2011). Placing Nature on the Borders of Religion, Philosophy and Ethics. USA: Ashgate. p. 212. ISBN 978-1-4094-8152-2. Retrieved 13 June 2025.
  10. ^ "Joe Tateyama". amazon.com. Amazon. Retrieved 31 May 2025.
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