A specter is haunting American conservatism: the specter of vitalism.
The word, like the orientation it describes, is complex and multivalent. Originally, “vitalism” was a specific term of art—denoting a philosophical current emerging out of German idealism, one that stressed sheer life, in all its glory and chaos, as the ur-principle of the human sciences.1 But while the shadow of that tradition still lingers, its expression is different today.
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