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Through the discussion of four german-writing authors (R. Spaemann, H. Jonas, Th. von Uexküll, A. Portmann), it is shown that the question of finality – though it is banished by the great part of modern thought and biological science – must be rehabilitated if we want to think correctly about the phenomenon of life. But this reintroduction of finality implies no reduction to rational or utilitarian finality. In the last analysis, “life is without why,” and self-conservation, mere survival, is in no way the ultimate reason of life.