Erwin Scroninger wrote the definitive book on the subject a long time ago.
Biologists are fairly satisfied with a DEFINITION of life, for whatever esoteric purposes THAT could be put to, we are now engaged in a full fledged and total struggle to understand HOW life works, now that we are fairly satisfied we know what life IS.
It is the details of HOW life works that will lead to treatments for disease, understanding of pathology, understanding aging, etc.
A better definition of what life is isn't going to be useful for much, especially delving as you do into metaphysical navel gazing.
Once again....
Life: An organization of molecules that consumes energy in order to maintain and replicate its molecular organization.
How did the molecules get organized?
How did the molecules get organized?