Vitalogy is the science of reflected life rooted in culture and everyday living.

Evidence

In fact, African thinking refers first of all to everyday living. For this reason, the first definition suitable for the term vitalogy is that of the science of life reflected. This is because at the base of every process of thinking, every thought, and every reflection is culture, which is the result of the manifestation of human and spiritual values as well as the very experience of a people. Life appears to our mind as the first transcendental, and therefore it is intelligible, conceivable, and intellectually transmittable. — Frans Dokman, Beyond Bantu Philosophy_…, 233

Categorization

Category: Definitional Content

• DEFINE: Author’s own definition of the coined term African Vitalogy.
• XREF: Life as ‘first transcendental’ echoes but reframes the Western Thomistic/Aristotelian notion of being as first transcendental.

Related

• African thought roots all reflection in everyday lived culture (similarity 0.95)
• Vitalogy differs from natural sciences as a science of lived life (similarity 0.87)
• Vitalogy differs from natural science because it studies lived life, not matter. (similarity 0.86)
• The doctrine of Vital Force unites Western Being and African Life (similarity 0.85)
• Life and eternal life form the constant foundation of African thought (similarity 0.84)
• Life, not abstract Being, grounds African philosophical first principles. (similarity 0.84)
• African Vitalogy is African thinking analogous to but distinct from Western philosophy (similarity 0.84)
• In African Vitalogy life and death are different modes of living (similarity 0.84)
• Core intuitions about life persist across oral and written African thought (similarity 0.83)
• In Vitalogy life and being each decline into primary modes (similarity 0.82)
• All thought within a culture expresses one aspect of universal truth. (similarity 0.82)
• African vitalogy treats death as spiritual renewal and progress in consciousness (similarity 0.82)
• Life is the single enduring reality underlying all thought and beings. (similarity 0.81)
• Academic vitalogists critically re-examine everyday life to translate tradition cross-culturally (similarity 0.81)
• African thought questions how and why rather than who, resisting fixed definitions (similarity 0.81)