In ancient Greek language the term Zoé means life, although the Greek language contemplates three nouns that make the meaning of the word "life": Zoé, Bìos, Psyché.

In Aristotele’s thinking, the opposition between the two terms zoé ("naked life" common to all the living beings) and bìos (the "form of life" as sign and sense of the being) becomes an issue of philosophical reflection to distinguish between natural life and political existence, between man as living being and man as political subject.

In the time, inside the Greek-Roman world, Zoé comes to point out the universal concept of life, the "principle of life", common to all living beings, and in a religious sense, the "eternal life."

Italo Calvino calls Zoe one of his "invisible city", and he describes it as the city of the indivisible existence, perhaps with reference to the universal concept of life developed in ancient Greece:
"...if the existence in all of its moments is all herself, the city of Zoe it is the place of the indivisible existence. But then, why the city? Which line does separate the inside from the outside, the roar of the wheels from the howl of the wolves?" (Italo Calvino, Le città invisibili, Einaudi, Turin, 1972).

Zo'è is also the name with which the indigenous of a Brazilian Amazonian forest tribe call themselves, a group of Tupi-Guarani language settled in the inclusive area between the rivers Cuminapanema and Erepecuru, in the north area of Parà state.
The Zo'ès belong to those few Amazonian ethnic group that had experienced the contact with the "white" world, only from a few decades, being for a long time unknown and isolated in their own environmental context.