Raymond Ruyer

Raymond Ruyer (13 January 1902, Plainfaing, Vosges - 22 June 1987, Nancy) was a French philosopher in the late 20th century. Author of many important works, he covered several topics such as the philosophy of biology, the philosophy of informatics, the philosophy of value and others. His most popular book is The Gnosis of Princeton in which he presents his own philosophic views under the pretence that he was representing the views of an imaginary group of American scientists. He developed a theory of consciousness of all living matter, named panpsychism, which was a major influence on philosophers such as Simondon, Deleuze and Guattari.

Works

(in French unless noted otherwise)

Monographs

• La conscience et le corps, Paris: Alcan, 1937.

• Éléments de psycho-biologie, Paris: PUF, 1946.

• Le monde des valeurs: études systématiques, Paris: Aubier, 1947, ARG.

• L'utopie et les utopies, Paris: PUF, 1950.

• Néo-finalisme, Paris: PUF, 1952, ARG; new ed., 2012.
  • Neofinalism, intro. Mark B.N. Hansen, trans. Alyosha Edlebi, University of Minnesota Press, 2016, xxi+300 pp. [1]. Review: Smith (Parrhesia). (English)

• La cybernétique et l'origine de l'information, Paris: Flammarion, 1954, ARG.
  • La Cibernetica y el origen de la informacion, n.d. (Spanish)
  • Cybernetics and the Origin of Information, trans. Amélie Berger-Soraruff, Andrew Iliadis, Daniel W. Smith, and Ashley Woodward, Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2024, ARG. (English)

• La genèse des formes vivantes, Paris: Flammarion, 1958, ARG.
  • La genesi delle forme viventi, Bompiani, 1966, 274 pp. (Italian)
  • The Genesis of Living Forms, trans. Jon Roffe and Nicholas B. de Weydenthal, Rowman & Littlefield, 2019, 226 pp, ARG. Publisher. (English)

• La philosophie de la valeur, Paris: Armand Colin, 1959.
  • Filosofia del valor, n.d. (Spanish)

• Paradoxes de la conscience et limites de l'automatisme, Paris: Albin Michel, 1960.

• L'animal, l'homme, la fonction symbolique, Paris: Gallimard, 1964, ARG.

• Éloge de la société de consommation, Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1969,

• Dieu des religions, Dieu de la science, Paris: Flammarion, 1970.

• Les nuisances idéologiques, Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1972.

• La gnose de Princeton, Paris: Fayard, 1974.
  • A Gnose de Princeton, Cultrix, 1995, 200 pp. (Portuguese)

• Les nourritures psychiques. La politique du bonheur, Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1975.

• Les cent prochains siècles, Paris: Fayard, 1977.

• Homère au féminin ou La jeune femme auteur de l'Odyssée, Paris: Copernic, 1977.

• L'art d'être toujours content. Introduction à la vie gnostique, Paris: Fayard, 1978.

• Le sceptique résolu, Paris: Robert Laffont, 1979.

• Souvenirs -1- Ma famille alsacienne et ma vallée vosgienne, Paris: Vent d'Est, 1985.

• L'Embryogenèse du monde et le Dieu silencieux [1983], Klincksieck, 2013, 286 pp, ARG.

Articles

• "L’action à distance d’après la science contemporaine", Revue Métapsychique 16, 1951, pp 183-196.
• "The Mystery of Reproduction and The Limits of Automatism", trans. Victor A. Velen, Diogenes 12:48, 1964. (English)

Bibliography

• at Ladeleuziana.org

Literature

• Elizabeth Grosz, "Deleuze, Ruyer and Becoming-Brain: The Music of Life's Temporality", Parrhesia 15 (2012), pp 1-13. (English)
• Andrew Iliadis, "Raymond Ruyer's Cybernetics and the Origin of Information", Philosophy of Information & Communication blog, 14 May 2013. (English)
• Revue philosophique de la France et de l'étranger 138(1): "Raymond Ruyer: l’appel des sciences", Paris: PUF, 2013.
• Critique 804: "Ruyer l’inclassable", Paris: Minuit, 2014, 96 pp. [2] [3]
• Deleuze Studies 11(4): "Ontologies of Difference: The Philosophies of Gilbert Simondon and Raymond Ruyer", ed. Andrew Iliadis, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2017, pp 492-626. [4] (English)

See also

• Gilbert Simondon

Links

• Ruyer on BnF
• Wikipedia