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nternational Phenomenological Society
Philosophy and Phenomenological Research
A Short Introduction to the Neofinalist Philosophy of Raymond RuyerAuthor(s): Rolf A. WiklundSource: Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 21, No. 2 (Dec., 1960), pp. 187-198Published by: International Phenomenological Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2104322 Accessed: 16-02-2016 22:15 UTC
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A SHORT INTRODUCTION
TO
THE NEOFINALIST PHILOSOPHY
OF
RAYMOND RUYER
Anyone who is averse to the concept
of
a mechanistic universe
will
find a valuable ally
in
Raymond Ruyer of Nancy, France. He began his
philosophical career in
1930
by
setting forth and defending a mechanistic
monism, but later on felt compelled to renounce it, and to evolve a neo
finalist ontology. n La conscience et l corps 1937) Ruyer expounds with
admirable Gallic clarity what he terms l epipMnomenisme retourne:
reality resides in the subjective, and not in the epiphenomena objective.
He has ever since devoted himself to the corroboration of this bold
philosophical claim, and in Neo-finalisme
1952)
he marshals a wealth of
isomorphic facts gleaned from the sciences to demonstrate the cogency
of his metaphysics.
n
Europe, Ruyer is gaining
an
ever-widening philosophical audience,
because his metaphysics is not only remarkably coherent, but also
intensely stimulating. He does not croak
an
existentialist lay of vanity
and despair, but preaches a gospel of tough endeavor, finding everywhere
in nature and in the multifarious doings of man evidence of the essential
purposiveness of life. The following article, briefly resuming the main
tenets of his thought, is an attempt to make Ruyer better known in the
United States, where the basically optimistic bias of his philosophy should
commend
it
to the American temper.
Ruyer foursquarely maintains that meaning and di{ection sens) are
inherent in the inorganic and organic world, and that the activity of
conscious man, firmly rooted in
that
world, is its natural prolongation.
As an irrefutable proof of finalist activity in human affairs Ruyer ad
vances the axiological cogito, the formal contents of which can be enounced
thus: I am seeking a first truth, a rock-bottom certitude, therefore I am
free. Freedom is then the certitude I sought, because the search for know
ledge implies freedom, which is the positive condition of such a search."1
1 Raymond Ruyer,
Neo-finalisme.
Presses Universitaires de France, Paris, 1952.
P.5.
187
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188 PHILOSOPHY AND
PHENOMENOLOGICAL
RESEARCH
This cogito shows how absurd is the claim of the determinist, who
maintains that man
is
fettered by causal chains, and thus incapable
of
purposive activity. Actually, by asserting his claim as a truth and so
implicitly admitting
that
he seeks a
truth
the determinist refutes himself
by the contents that he gives to the cogito. To deny freedom, pretending,
in
so doing, to enounce a verity, that is ultimately to affirm freedom. The
determinist is evidently not pushed into activity a tergo, as he would
maintain, but
rather
initiates an argument to a purpose, and, in the very
act, frees himself of the fetters he purports to prove are there. His activity
is manifestly not purely mechanistic, but essentially axiological, i.e., it
affirms a value; it strives toward a goal.
After having squashed the determinist·, whatever his stripe, with
the
irrefutability
of
the cogito, Ruyer goes on to define a cluster of notions
pertinent to the finalist activity that can serve as contents to that cogito.
The chief notion is precisely that of freedom, synonymous with finalist
activity in that
it
means freedom to set a goal and, conforming to norms, to
work toward its realization. Another notion is that
of
existence, i.e., an
existing center
of
normative acts, which is in its
turn
intimately connected
with yet another important element of finalist activity, namely that of
work,
which must be distinguished from mere mechanical functioning,
however complex.
That
which exists, realizes, i.e., works, or strives toward
a goal.
Further
defining the notions pertinent to finalist activity, Ruyer holds
that
an action, as
it
unfolds itself in a spatiotemporal world of cause and
effect, cannot be understood without reference to its goal. This finality
of
the action gives meaning to all
that
is purely a succession of causes and
effects in it. A European, for instance, who for the first time observes a
game
of
American football is
apt
to see only a meaningless display of
violence, with most
of
the players brought to the ground most of the time,
whereas the American devotee makes sense
of it
all by checking what he
observes against what he knows to be the purpose of the game. Each
action on the'field, senseless in its purely mechanistic aspect, is transmuted
by the finality of the game, surviewing
survolant)
all its different phases,
into a purposive whole.2
Finally,
the
notion of invention is also inseparable from finalist activity.
To
set a goal already involves an effort of invention, and to choose
the
means to
attain
that particular goal is, in a very real sense, to invent them.
Invention means
putting
causes and effects to work, and - as
it
may end
in
success or in failure - eventually implies the notion of
value.
Finalist
2 E. W. F. Tomlin, Living and Knowing Faber and Faber Ltd, London, 1955.
P.
150 n
a footnote, Tomlin points
out
that
surview is a neologism.
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A SHORT
INTRODUCTION TO
THE NEOFINALIST PHILOSOPHY 189
activity is successful if
it
realizes a value in conforming to norms. To work
is thus always trying to work, for the realization of a value can only be
approximate, never exact.
Corollary
to
these six notions is the presupposition of
an
extra-spatio
temporal realm of values to
account for finalist activity. All such activity
must be distinguished from mechanical functioning, which is a mere
succession of causes and effects
in
space and time, irreversible, and
incapable of surviewing itself.
s
neither goals nor the means to reach
them
exist ready-made in a strictly linear universe,
but
must be invented
by a center of actualization,3
it
must be admitted
that,
when working
to
achieve a goal, such a center moves
in an
ideal realm in which
it
is possible
to
surview different chains of causes and effects, and
to
manipulate them,
in action, so as
to
shape them into means toward the attainment of a goal
as yet ideal.
Ruyer maintains
that
the concept of absolute surview
survol absolu),
i.e.,
that
a center of actualization moves in a realm of values beyond
space and time, is the key
not
only
to
the problem of consciousness, but
also
to
the problem of life itself. To highlight this concept,
and
to prepare
the way for his central thesis, namely
l epiphenomenisme rewurne,
Ruyer -
in a highly original and convincing chapter of his
Neo-finalisme
- makes
a crucial distinction between the optical and the mental aspect of vision.
f we want to observe a physical surface - a checkered table-top, for
instance, the different checkers of which are all definable
parf,es extra
parf,es
-
we
must place ourselves
so
in space that our retina is, perpen
dicularly,
at
a certain distance from
that
table-top. We must also be in a
third dimension in order to see it. These conditions are valid for
the
physico-physiological or optical aspect of perception. But if
we
shift our
focus of attention from the tangible table-top to our visual sensation per
se -
to
that sensation as a
state
of consciousness - then
we
do
not
have
to
be outside our sensation in order
to
contemplate all the different details
of which it is made up. We do
not
have to imagine a
third
eye or super
retina in its turn perceiving our visual sensation.
There is, then, a fundamental difference between perception, which is
an
organic maneuvering of the eyes subject to optical laws, and visual
sensation as a
state
of consciousness, which is a mental phenomenon
obeying subtler laws.
In
contradistinction
to
the physical surface of the
table-top, the surface of my visual sensation as such is what Ruyer terms
3 R.
Ruyer, op. cit., p. 9.
E.W.
F. Tomlin,
n is
Living and Knowing, calls such
an
existing center
of
normative acts a centre of actualization.
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190 PHILOSOPHY
AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH
an
absolute surface surface absolue), i.e., it is autoperceptive, and not
relative to any point of view exterior
to
it.
The absolute surface knows itself
wit1wut observing
itself.
f
we
do extrapolate a superretina in its
turn
inspecting the details of
our visual sensation, then infinite regression sets in, and
we
are forced
to
imagine superretinas ad
infinitum
each one observing the sensation of
the preceding one. The only way to check such a regression is to assume
that our visual sensation knows itself by absolute surview, and thus
escapes the conditions of physico-physiological laws.
Ruyer carefully explains
that
the persistent impression of distance
between the conscious" " and the field of vision, causing us to imagine a
superretina, stems from the - quite metaphorical - transformation of
an
absolute surface into a physical one.
f
we want to inspect a detail qf the
absolute surface, we can do so, deliberately, and without moving our eyes
on the physical surface, by shifting our focus of attention from it to
that
detail. But at this moment, we experience the greatest difficulty in not
imagining the " " as exterior to our visual sensation, i.e., at a distance
from it.
f we
cede
to
the persistent impression
that
situates the
" " at
a
distance from our sensation as such, then
we
transform, metaphorically,
the absolute surface into a physical one, thus inducing infinite regression,
and
we find ourselves reduced
to
chasing
an
ever-receding
" ."
s
soon
as
we
tire of inspecting a particular detail of our visual sensation, however,
then
that
detail, no longer the focus of attention by a sustained effort of
the
will, imperceptibly becomes a
part
of the absolute surface
that
knows
itself without observing itself.
Our visual sensation is thus
at
all times self-enjoyment,4 i.e., the
"I"
of
that
sensation is spatially ubiquitous, being simultaneously in the multiple
details of our field of vision. Whereas, in the physical surface the checkers
are all juxtaposed, and so spatially quite separate and distinct; in
the
absolute surface there exists no such separateness:
the
various orders and
relations of the checkers are instantly given in
an
absolute,
not
dis
sociable unity, without therefore being a fusion or a confusion. The
"I"
also possesses temporal ubiquity.
If
in a long sentence, for instance, the
key word is given last, the
"I"
could not grasp
that
sentence as a meaning
ful whole unless capable of transcending the purely temporal succession
of
its
words.
Because we can intuit
an
absolute surface without the aid of a third
dimension, Ruyer also gives volume
to that
surface, and
to
the concept
of absolute surview, referring to its proper scene of action as
that
of
an
absolute domain. Consciousness is evidently such a domain, or a multi-
4
Ibid.
p. 98. The
term
self-enjoyment is
that of
S. Alexander,
and Ruyer
uses
it without therefore subscribing to Alexander's philosophy.
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A SHORT INTRODUCTION TO THE
NEOFINALIST PHILOSOPHY
191
plicity-in-unity
(unitas multiplex),
giving,
at any
time, its elements as
an
instli.nt, indissoluble whole by virtue of absolute surview. As such a do
main, furthermore, consciousness is what Ruyer terms a forme vraie or
a unified, dynamic form, cognitive in relation to the trans-spatial realm,
where it glimpses values to actualize, and cohesive as to its activity in the
spatiotemporal world, where it strives to hold together in a significant
organization what it has actualized. Thus, consciousness is, simultaneously,
a form, and the force binding that form together.
III
If,
through trepanation,
we
lay bare the occipital lobe of the brain -
that
lobe being the projection area for visual sensation - and observe
it,
even the most careful scrutiny will reveal no sign of its self-perceptive
activity. The percipi of the cortex by an observer does not disclose its
esse i.e., the whole of its reality. Ruyer maintains that only inference,
as over against mere observation, leads us
to
the
esse.
The consciousness that we
intuit
is the reality that appears to an ob
server as the cortex, i.e., as a spatiotemporal structure, or - in Ruyer's
terminology - a
forme-structure.
It is the spatiotemporal disposition of
the cortex, appearing to repose in a purely material equilibrium.
But
the
cortex as living, self-perceptive .tissue escapes mere observation. We seize
its reality by inference - by the combination of observation, which is a
physical act, and of sensation, which is the self-perceptive activity of the
cortex. Observation never gives us more
than
superficial interactions
obeying mechanistic laws, and this explains why the pattern of the light
waves that the cortex emits tells us nothing of it as living tissue. But
inference, which is the way to knowledge, enables us to understand the
interior, primary relations of a structure. Inference, a mental act, permits
us to seize on the quick the otherness of a being.
This leads us to the keystone of Ruyer's philosophical edifice: l epipM-
nomenisme retourne. The Cartesian scission between body and soul is false.
There are
not
two kinds of
matter
- a thinking matter, or mind stuff,
and a material matter different from it. There is only one reality,
namely consciousness or subjectivity, which appears to an observer as a
body or an object.
Toute
la
realite, toute l'efficacite, appa.rtient
au
subjectif. L'objectif
n'est qu'un
epipMnomene, qui,
par
lui-meme, n'est ni reel ni agissant.11
The body is the by-product of the perception of one being by another
being. A
is
perceived by B, in his consciousness, as an object independent
5 Raymond Ruyer, a con8cience et le corp8. Presses Universitaires de France,
Paris,
1950. P.
28.
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192 PHILOSOPHY
AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH
of him, and B will call what he perceives A's body. A wi 11 also adopt the
same view as regards B, and A will, furthermore, come to consider him
self as a body to which consciousness is appended.
But
this is a reciprocal
illusion of incarnation heightened by the fact
that
we can observe our
selves with our own eyes and touch the various parts of our body with our
own hands. f we were
so
built as to be incapable ofobserving or of touching
ourselves, and
i f
there were no mirrors,
it
would hardly enter into our minds
to
conceive of ourselves as a body
nd
a consciousness somehow affixed
to
it, Buyer thus makes
it
clear that our mode of apprehension - our per
ception - transforms subjectivities into objects, or, more generally, into
spatiotemporal structures.
But
although we may use
the
word
body
corps:
Korper)
both when
we refer
to
a living organism and
to
a piece of a mineral, this does not
mean that we are justified in looking for a subjectivity in any object.
Physical existence denotes a mode
of
relations between elementary
particles, and not a category of beings. A fossil, for instance, was once a
subjectivity, but as a fossil
it
is only an aggregate of molecules bereft of
the particular, interior relations that once made it into a unitary, dynamic
form. n both cases, however, we
may
refer to the fossil as a body. But
we must distinguish between primary beings, which are absolute domains,
and secondary beings, which are aggregates or accumulations of primary
beings.
Primary beings are centers of finalist activity, and they obey the laws
of the absolute domain with its unity surviewing a multiplicity. Secondary
beings, on the other hand, obey statistical laws that express the relations
of mechanistic causalities. Whereas the fossil once constituted a colonial,
hierarchical empire, namely myriad absolute domains interpenetrating
and interacting according to complex laws, the fossil as such is a mere
juxtaposition of absolute domains. We may say
that
the
fossil as a living
being was monadic, but its monads were equipped with a number of doors
and windows that permitted a wide variety of intercommunication. The
fossil as such is still monadic, but the intercommunication is gone. Only a
sort of dumb, mechanical jostling subsists as a mode of relation between
monads.
V
A subjectivity cannot be defined as a substance,
but
rather
as
an
existing center of finalist activity the unity of which surviews a multi
plicity so as to realize a trans-spatial essence or value. s the surviewing
6
Raymond Ruyer,
Neo finalisme.
Presses Universitaires de France, Paris, 1952.
P.160.
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A SHORT
INTRODUCTION
TO THE NEOFINALIST PHILOSOPHY 193
unity cannot be substantiated, Ruyer - in order to explain the finalist
activity of any subjectivity- affirms that there is a sort of metaphysical
transversal cutting across any absolute domain. The two utmost points
of
that
transversal are, on the one hand,
the
I
of human consciousness,
or the
x
of an organic individuality, and, on the other hand,
what
he
calls
l Ideal
directeur e
l organisation,
or the thematic potential.7
In
other
words, a subjectivity is not only in contact with an m w e l t ~ but is also
tuned in for sustenance and guidance to a trans-spatial or metabiological
realm, which is
that
of essences or
values
of ideas and of mnemonic themes.
Certain isomorphic, psychological facts are hard to explain except by
reference to such an ideal realm.
There is, for instance,
an
undeniable
resemblance
between both two
successive recalls
o
one and the same memory - which are acts of an
individual, psychological memory - and between numerically different
realizations of an invention made independently innumerable times -
which are acts of a specific, organic memory, inventing one man to
resemble another, for example, or one animal to resemble another one of
the same species. Although our individual memories die with us, the
specific memory of man will continue to guide embryos till the end of
time.s But the specific memory of a particular organism, althought
capable of guiding its organic invention for millions of years, is
not
eternal and immortal; the specific memory of the trilobite, for instance,
is dead and gone forever. To explain the gradual emergence of resemblance
satisfactorily, individual memory and organic invention alike must be
viewed, analogously, as tapping a constant, trans-spatial reservoir of
mnemonic themes that never dries up, despite widely scattered and
unlimited spatiotemporal draughts.
For Ruyer, then, the observable organism has, as
it
were, one foot in
the
ideal realm and the other one
in
the spatiotemporal world. The
thematic potential manifests itself in
that
world in three unified, dynamic
forms: the
organic
the psychic, and the spiritual.
In
a living being with no central nervous system, such as the protozoon,
the thematic potential is the organic type itself. The
x
of its individu
ality, i.e.,
that
by virtue of which the protozoon is perpetually bringing
its potential into being as a structure, very nearly coincides with that
potential itself - but not quite, since the protozoon as a living being is
already a colonial, hierarchical empire composed of numerous absolute
domains intimately interpenetrating and interacting.
But,
generally,
w may say that - for the protozoon -
percipi est
esse because
it
is auto-
7 Ibid., p. 105.
In a striking analogy,
Ruyer
likens
the
embryo to a man who is
on the
verge
of
recalling a memory.
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194 PHILOSOPHY
AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL
RESEARCH
perceptive, and this autoperceptiveness constitutes its very being. The
protozoon is primary consciousness as organic form.
En
d autres rermes,
n'y
a
au
fond
qu'un
seul mode
de
conscience:
la
conscience
primaire, forme
en
soi de
tout
organisme
et ne
faisant
qu'un
avec
la
vie.9
Primary consciousness, objectively manifesting itself in a unified, dynamic
form, is coextensive and coterminous with life itself
at
all levels.
As for the higher animals, equipped with a central nervous system
and a brain, their potential is at the
same time the organic type and its
particular Umwelt The
x
of the organic individuality is
at
this level
at
a certain remove from its potential, and
so
the higher animals do not
directly perceive themselves as organic forms,
but
- because they have
evolved a secondary consciousness - realize their potential psychically,
i.e., through instincts, triggered
by
significant sense impressions relevant
to
its specific
Umwelt.
Man s potential is
to
be sought
in
a realm of essences and values com
pletely separated from the organic type. His secondary consciousness,
no longer purely psychic, enables him
to
live in a new dimension of reality.
Man glimpses essences or values as ideas either directly in
th
e trans
spatial realm, by virtue of
the
self-perceptive activity of the cortex, or
indirectly in the structures of
the
spatiotemporal world,
by
virtue of the
sensorial activity of the cortex.
On pourrait comparer une aire sensorielle cerebrale -
ou
pluMt
sa
contrepartie
reelle
et
auto-subjective -
une glace sans
tain
qui,
d'une
part, re9oit les images
physiques des objets observes, et qui,
d'autre part,
reflechit les essences, corres
pondantes
a ces
objets,
du
monde trans-spatial.10
An idea can be said to be an essence apprehended by a consciousness
that
strives to realize
it;
in the
ideal that
essence has become a value
that
dynamically energizes a consciousness. The conscious
I
of a man
does not merely passively contemplate an idea, or - as does the animal -
dumbly submit
to
instincts,
but
strives
to
incarnate
it
in various ways,
to
transfoqn
it
into a significant organization in the spatiotemporal
world. The
I
strives to convert the present - perishable, because subject
to the restrictions of time and space - into a mnemonic theme, deriving
both its meaning
and
its subsistence from
an
essence. Individual memories,
reflecting past encounters with ideas and present attempts
to
realize
them and
to
control them in a significant organization, must hitch rides,
so to speak, with trans-spatial essences
to
subsist for a certain while as
their symbiotic passengers.
The laws of
th
e spatiotemporal world inexorably adulte
rat
e what is
9 R. Ruyer, op. cit. p. 104.
1 Ibid.
p.
132.
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A SHORT
INTRODUCTION
TO THE NEOFINALIST PHILOSOPHY 195
pure. When an immutable essence, occupying the highest level
in
the
trans-spatial realm, is apprehended by the
I
as
an
idea,
and
begins to
be realized in the spatiotemporal world, a hybridization of the actual or
present and the eternal takes place.
For
this reason, a man's life is
but
a
series of axiological endeavors -
Pfeile
der
Sehnsucht nach
dem
andern
Ufer. In his constant reaching for an optimum
that
can never quite be
attained, man himself, as a unified, dynamic form, is spiritual, and
realizes his potential, emerges as a personality to the extent that he
devotes himself to the elaboration of a culture.
Ruyer considers the
atom
as the last traceable subjectivity before
reaching the last domains that are pure activities. The atom is, in
fine, also in formation, only
the
x
of its individuality coincides with its
potential, for the
atom
is what it does. It is bringing itself into being and
maintaining itself as an atom in a constant process of dynamic structur
ation. In the last domains, the surviewed multiplicity disappears, and
w can no longer speak of an absolute domain, for
it
is always a multi
plicity-in-unity, or - more accurately - a multiplicity simultaneously
knowing and surviewing itself. Instead, the last domains may be
described as pure activities, constantly and eternally holding the
universe together.
The vast thematic potential
that
Ruyer refers
to
as the trans-spatial
realm thus acts as a dynamic force charging
not
only the organic world,
in which man is firmly rooted, but also the inorganic world, which he
seeks to manipulate into a significant order. Man's personality disinte
grates wheh he is no longer guided by values, when he
is
no longer axio
logically held together
by
their attraction. He goes to pieces, and
virtually ceases
to
exist. And when we destroy the atom's personality,
its disintegration (usually) rocks the world.
v
f human activity and its various products are finalist - so Ruyer
reasons - then man himself must likewise be the product of purposive
activity. A psycho-biological examination of his ontogenesis would seem
to
corroborate such
an
assumption.
The embryonic surface, when subjected
to
drastic lesions
at an
early
stage
of
its development, does not respond like a surface with geometrico
physical properties.
It
appears instead
that
the embryo is
equipotential:
that any part of it can deputize for the whole. Its responses to lesions are
always corrections or modifications. Now, this equipotentiality must
be the objective manifestation of
an
absolute domain of surview, and the
embryo, from its very
start
in space and time, must be in contact with a
metabiological realm
of
mnemonic themes
that
dominates the visible,
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196 PHILOSOPHY
AND
PHENOMENOLOGICA.L RESEARCH
structural transformations that later take place.
No
gaseous vertebrate,
however, has in its turn created the embryo, for the organism, guided by
an organic memory, invents
the
brain before making use of it. The
equipotential embryo must therefore be considered as an organ to build
organs; as the origin of an
internal circuit
of purposive activity culminating
in the adult organism. And if it
partly
functions like a machine, the fact
remains that the organism is a machine that has built itself.
t
must, in
fact, be regarded as
the first of all meaningful creations.
s
the embryo develops, primary consciousness progressively with
draws its activity, and it is replaced by mechanistic assemblages - im
mutable, anatoinical dispositions of tissue - representing a sort of con
gealed or fossilized finality. The mnemonic themes
that
are successively
called on in the course of embryonic development determine irreversible
differentiations, i.e., at a certain moment the rudiments of, say, the liver
will develop into precisely that organ and none other. The theme of an
organ, in congealing into an organ, ceases to be a theme, and becomes
instead an anatoinical structure, functioning more or less like ·a machine.
The dynainism that brought that organ into being'has then completely
discharged itself, yet vestiges of the original self-regulative activity of
primary consciousness still remain in the adult organism, and become
apparent when
it
is confronted with injuries or diseases.
Although the I - part and parcel of our brain - receives no other
messages from primary consciousness
than
those of various instinctive
drives that - while often imperious - are always protopathic, primary
consciousness
must
not
be thought of as vague or psychoid relative to
its
tasks. The development of the embryo being a marvel of subtlety and
precision,
it
is
not
logical
to
assume
that
its self-enjoyment is vaguer
than
the secondary consciousness of the adult,
but rather
that the embryo
possesses a consciousness the
contents
of which differs from
that
of
the
adult. The living tissue of the organism itself, closely related to an
Umwelt
constitutes
the
contents·of primary consciousness, whereas
the
contents
of cerebral consciousness is brought to it by receptors modified by stimuli
exterior to
the
organism. The brain thus determines the
mode
through
which the organism will gain knowledge of the external world, and perinits
that
organism -
by
providing
it
with a wealth of sensorial information -
to overstep the liinitations of self-enjoyment.
Life, then, antedates cerebral consciousness,
but the brain plays an
exclusive
part
in effecting the junction between the organic internal
circuit and the
external circuit
of human activity. f and the electronic
computing machine is aa striking exmple - man's products almost seem
to be autonomous, they remain, in the last analysis, but tools
~ x t n s i o n s
and elaborations of man's organs - and they must be minded by the brain,
which is constantly obliged to link the external circuit of its activity with
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A SHORT INTRODUCTION TO THE
NEOFINALIST PHILOSOPHY
197
the
internal circuit of life itself.
t
is, consequently, along the internal
circuit
that the
Cartesian scission between a domain of mechanistic
causality
and
one of finalist activity takes place, separating massive
anatoinical disposition of tissue from self-perceptive tissue capable of
thematic activity.
n
the brain, what is organic assemblage is separated
from what is reflective consciousness.
Cerebral equipotentiality, i.e., the experimentally proved fact
that
a
part
of the cortex
can
deputize for the whole, must be - as in
the
embryo -
the objective manifestation of
an
absolute domain of surview,
and
the
brain must be in contact with a metabiological realm of themes, not only
directly, as the embryo is,
but
also indirectly, through the spatiotemporal
structures
that
the brain perceives.
La surface corticale . . . ne fonctionne pas comme une surface marerielle avec des
proprieres geometrico-physiques
Par
elle, des themes signifiants se transfor
ment en
schemes d'action (cortex moteur et frontal anterieur) ou inversement,
des
patterns
sensoriels viennent evoquer des significations (cortex posterieur).11
The adult brain is thus
an
organ
that
has remained embryonic, while
the rest of
the
adult organism, having finished its growth, is almost wholly
out of contact with the thematic potential. The brain can justly be
considered as
an
embryo
that
is
not yet
fully grown. The equipotentiality
of the brain makes
it
into a uniquely flexible organ through which in
numerable connections with themes and essences can be established.
With each connection, the brain is transformed into a differentiated organ
-
but
only temporarily, because a cerebral connection is not a circuit
that
is irreversible. Man - in his efforts
to
order the world into a meaningful
organization - passes from one activity
to
another, and
so
constantly
brings new circuits into being as he calls new thematic systems into
action.
Ruyer epigrammatizes
the
substance of his subjective monism thus:
faire et en faisant se faire.
The universe is conceived of as multitudinous
centers
of
actualization forming a fibrous structure in time, with each
fiber always the continuation of previous ones ultimately plunging back
into the very origins of
the
universe in a richly tangled skein of multi
plicity. A pure multiplicity of dynainic agents striving to realize their
potentials is, however, not the substance of the universe,
but it
is probably
analogous to
an
absolute domain.
To achieve his neofinalist philosophy, Ruyer sketches its theology.
f
- he concludes -
we
cannot seize the activity whence issues
that
of our
I ,
it
is because that I is in itself a seizing. That behind our I
which
we
cannot seize must likewise be
that
which cannot be seized
behind the
x
of
any
other subjectivity. This primal activity is God.
11
Ibid.
p. 49.
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198 PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH
He is not only in all the ideals sought
but
also in all the agents seeking
them. God as creativeness - Ruyer calls
Him
ieu ontinue
-
is simul
taneously and indissolubly the supreme Agent and the supreme Ideal.
Our self both originates in God and goes back
to
Him and man is co
creative with God.
UNIVERSITY OF
LAUSANNE
LAUSANNE SWITZERLAND.
ROLF
A
WIKLUND.