The idea that life cannot be explained in material terms stems from Aristotle, but life as a potent explanatory and evaluative concept rose to importance in the late nineteenth century in reaction to scientific materialism and Kantian idealism . It appealed, among others, to Bergson, Nietzsche, and Dilthey.
Life is known empirically or by intuition, rather than by concepts and logical inference.
Life is objective and transcends the knowing subject. Vitalism stresses the diversity of life and tends towards pluralism, and occasionally relativism, rather than monism. It is not sharply distinct from philosophical anthropology . The Penguin Dictionary of Psychology 2. The Oxford Companion to Philosophy 3.