Lebenskraft (Vital Force)

Abstract

Although it gained currency in scientific debates about generation and processes of life (vitality) at the end of the eighteenth century, the lexeme Lebenskraft (vital force) played only a marginal role in Goethe’s scientific writings. By accounting for the distinctiveness of the living (or organic, animate), it manifests the conceptual bifurcation within the scientific discourse of the period between the living and non-living. Goethe’s understanding of the concept, which is fluid, reflects a critical approach to these debates. While at times he understood Lebenskraft as an organizing principle to explain processes of generation, he was generally skeptical toward the concept, which in his view compromised scientific argumentation and limited knowledge production. In Goethe’s literary works, by contrast, Lebenskraft, became a positive metaphor for metaphysical and artistic acts of creation.