Mechanica finalis and raymond ruyer’s philosophy of neofinalism

Abstract

The article discusses Raymond Ruyer’s philosophy of neofinalism, which offers an original reading of the theory of final cause consistent with the data of the natural sciences. In contrast to the classical version of causa finalis, neofinalism accentuates not the object in its finished form, but rather the goal-oriented process of searching for the forms of its realization. Final cause opens out as unsubjected consciousness that is realized as qualitative evaluation which influences the object’s behavior. Ruyer calls this primary consciousness an “absolute survey” or external contour of consciousness. Its secondary version is an internal contour or the consciousness of intentional objects. The finalist process is realized through a mechanical consequence, and the result of finalism is a being, while the result of the mechanics is an aggregate. Mechanics and finality converge at the meta-level in the operations of trans-spatial and trans-subjective forms that assemble the structural solutions for local processes. Consciousness ceases to be “conscious about something” and on the contrary, becomes “something” itself, a thing that in precritical philosophy would have called a “mental entity.” Ruyer’s works exerted great influence on Gilles Deleuze’s philosophy and fit into the ongoing tradition of exegesis of the multiple and complex nature of reality alongside the oeuvre of Gabriel Tarde, Alfred North Whitehead, Henri Bergson and Gilbert Simondon. Ruyer proposed and developed such terms in Deleuze’s vocabulary as molar and molecular, assemblage, virtuality, transversality, trans-individuality and trans-spatiality. The article provides an outline of Ruyer’s writings and gives an account of his main work Neofinalism together with commentaries and comparisons with the views of Plato, Bergson, Simondon, Deleuze, Felix Guattari, Daniel Dennett and Antonio Damasio. © 2020, Gaidar Institute Press. All rights reserved.