Driesch, Hans Adolf Eduard
Driesch, Hans Adolf Eduard
(1867-1940) An experimental biologist turned philosopher, he as a rationalist became the most prominent defender of a renovated vitalism. He excludes the physical-chemical level of reality from his vitalism. He asserts that every organism has its own entelechy. For what he terms phylogenetic development, a more inclusive vitalism of the whole evolutionary process, he postulates a super-personal phylogenetic entelechy. He offers an a priori justification of his vitalistic theory, and treats incisively the logic of the psychological. Main works
Philosophy of the Organism;
Ordnungslehre, 1912;
Wirklichkeitslehre, 1917;
Alltagsrtsel des Seelenlebens, 1938;
“Kausalitt und Vitalismus” in Jahrbuch der Schopenhauer Gesellschaft, XVI, 1939.
— H.H.