Animism is a belief in the spirit of all things.
- Freud drew on Tylor’s definition of animism in order to bridge psychoanalytic theory with cultural-historical analysis. “Animism, Magic and the Omnipotence of Thoughts,” the third essay of Totem and Taboo from 1913, argues that animistic beliefs mirror the narcissistic phase of libidinal development when children overestimate the power of their wishes to shape reality
- later thinkers reframed animism as a ‘relational epistemology’ centered around conditions and practices of recognizing personhood in other-than-human beings.
- Expanded frameworks for personhood carry significant ethical and environmental ramifications, as exemplified by the 2017 decision to recognize the legal personhood of the Whanganui River in Aotearoa, or New Zealand. The effort was championed by the Whanganui Māori, who have long considered the river both a “living being” and “ancestor” (Tumin 2024).
In Literature:
- A notable example is German RTSM - Romanticismm’s fascination with the pre-Cartesian philosophy of Paracelsus, especially his writings on elementals or elemental spirits: animate embodiments of the four classical elements. Already in Goethe’s Faust, Part One, elementals appear in close connection to the Earth Spirit (Erdgeist), who reveals to Faust a vibrant, interconnected cosmos and teaches him to recognize “my brothers in the quiet woods, the air / The water” (meine Brüder / Im stillen Busch, in Luft und Wasser) (102).
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