Hylozoism

HYLOZOISM. - From ὕλη, matter, and ζωή, life, it is the theory that recognizes in matter as such a form of life.

In the ancients, hylozoism coincides with panpsychism (πάν, all, ψυχή, soul), insofar as life was held to derive from the soul. According to Anaximenes and Diogenes of Apollonia, air is the soul, because it is the subtlest principle of all things (Aristotle, De an., I, 2, 405 a 21 ff.); for Heraclitus, on the other hand, the soul is vapor, which is the most mobile principle (ibid., 405 a 25-26; cf. Heraclitus, Raccolta dei frammenti, edited by R. Walzer, Florence 1939, frg. 36). The whole world has a soul, the Stoics affirm, and in all things are the λόγοι σπερματικοί (Diogenes Laertius, VII, 149, 156-57). Plotinus maintains that the earth and the elements are animate and living (Enneads, VI, 7, 11). Hylozoism is found in new forms in modern thought. T. Campanella, from the fact that nature "abhors the void," deduces that "the world is an animal wholly sentient, and that all its parts enjoy the common life" (Del senso delle cose e della magia, I, 1, ch. 9, ed. A. Bruers, Bari 1925, p. 36). Giordano Bruno, in his Neoplatonic monism, holds that the entire universe and all things are animate and living (De la causa, dialogue 2; ed. G. Gentile, ibid. 1907, p. 179). W. Leibniz denies that there is a soul of the world (Opera omnia, II, ed. L. Dutens, Geneva 1768, part 2, p. 49), but affirms that bodies are composed of monads, substances "ayant quelque chose de répondant aux âmes" (ibid., part 1, p. 46). E. Haeckel, in agreement with his materialistic monism, affirms that all matter has "Empfindung und Willen, natürlich niedersten Grades" (Die Welträtsel, Bonn 1900, p. 254). Even the dialectical materialism of V. I. Lenin admits that "in the foundation of the very edifice of matter one can only presuppose the existence of a faculty similar to sensation" (Materialismo ed empiriocriticismo, Brescia 1946, p. 37). Every monism admits it, whether materialistic or idealistic, insofar as the life of the whole, conceived in a material or spiritual way, is also in bodies, which are part of the whole.

Roberto Masi