Etheric / life body (2)
Ätherleib / Lebensleib — the formative-force body
Ätherleib — the etheric or 'life' body: the formative-force body that sustains the physical body's organisation against the entropic pull that would otherwise reduce it to its mineral substrate. Anthroposophy distinguishes the etheric sharply from the merely-physiological vital force: it is the bearer of the laws of the body's growth, regeneration, and morphological coherence, not just its energetic activity. Man shares the etheric body with the plant kingdom — plants have a physical and an etheric body, but no astral body. At death the etheric body is gradually re-absorbed into the cosmic ether over a period of about three days; the death-day rituals of many traditions are read by Anthroposophy as the body's accommodation to that withdrawal.
Point 2 of 7 in Anthroposophy — Steiner's Seven-Fold Human
Cross-tradition overlaps
No overlapping points are registered for this point.
Sources
Rudolf Steiner, Theosophie (primary_canonical)
Steiner, Theosophy (Theosophie, 1904), ch. I, 'The Essential Nature of Man,' introduces the etheric or life body as the bearer of formative and life forces alongside the physical body; this is the source's seven-member context, not a physiological claim.
Rudolf Steiner, An Outline of Esoteric Science (primary_canonical)
Steiner, An Outline of Esoteric Science (Die Geheimwissenschaft im Umriss, 1910), ch. I, 'The Nature of Humanity,' develops the etheric body as a distinct member and vehicle of life; chapter numbering follows the Creeger English edition's opening anthropological chapter.