ILOZOISMO. - 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 it was held that life derives from the soul. According to Anaximenes and Diogenes of Apollonia, air is the soul, because it is the subtlest principle of everything (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, ed. 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 animated and living (Enneads, VI, 7, 11). Hylozoism is found in new forms in modern thought. T. Campanella, from the fact that nature "abhors a vacuum," deduces that "the world is an entirely sentient animal, and all parts partake of the common life" (Del senso delle cose e della magia, I, 1, chap. 9, ed. A. Bruers, Bari 1925, p. 36). Giordano Bruno, in his Neoplatonic monism, thinks that the whole universe and all things are animated 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 2a, p. 49), but asserts that bodies are composed of monads, substances "ayant quelque chose de répondant aux âmes" (ibid., part 1a, p. 46). E. Haeckel, in accordance with his materialistic monism, asserts 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 "at 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, both materialistic and idealistic, admits it, insofar as the life of the whole, conceived in a material or spiritual way, is also in the bodies, which are part of the whole.