Raymond Ruyer's Philosophy of Life ; La philosophie de la vie de Raymond Ruyer
In this work I study French philosopher Raymond Ruyer (1902-1987) as a philosopher of life. I intend to highlight the path that leads him, from an initial mechanistic conception that reduces life to physical and chemical structures, to a finalist panpsychism that conceives life as a conscious activity common to every individual being. I tried to identify Ruyer's main sources regarding the problem of life : drawing from Cuénot, he aims to overcome mechanism in biology; drawing from Leibniz, he develops a "corrected monadology"; after Butler (and Bergson) he conceives life as conscience and memory; with Schopenhauer, he sees human conscious life as a microcosm leading to the life that puts every being in motion; combining Etienne Wolff's embryology and Ellenberger's psychology, he constructs a platonic biology where Forms-Ideas or transcendent "themes" guide the living. He makes an informed and critical judgement of 20th century early cybernetics, genetics or ethology. I show how Ruyer is driven by his biological ambition to go from a monistic and naturalistic project, trying to overcome mind-body dualism, to a platonic idealism characterized by irreducible dualities (forming/functioning, individual/mass, physical/psychological, etc.). Both tendencies coexist and correct each other, which leads this conception of life to a number of logical, epistemological, moral and political problems, on which I intend to shed a light. ; Nous abordons l'œuvre de Raymond Ruyer (1902-1987) sous l'angle de la philosophie de la vie, pour mettre en évidence la trajectoire qui le conduit d'un mécanisme réduisant la vie à ses structures physico-chimiques jusqu'à un panpsychisme finaliste qui fait de la vie une activité consciente commune à l'ensemble des êtres individués. Nous cherchons à restituer l'apport des principales sources de Ruyer à son traitement du problème de la vie : à la suite de Cuénot, il entend dépasser le mécanisme en biologie ; à la suite de Leibniz, il entend faire une « monadologie corrigée » ; à la suite de ...